Unconscious Consience
by Demyrie
Summary: 6 years after Psychonauts, Razputin is not happy. Meanwhile, deep in the Psychonauts Headquarters, an Elite 'Naut is mysteriously attacked and left in a coma, and Milla and Sasha, at odds, must step up to the plate. SashaxMilla, RazxLilixOC. Spoilers.
1. Seasonal Greys

A/N: I have no idea where this is headed :D But I DO know that it takes place, like… 6 years after Psychonauts.

I just love Sasha and Milla so ASTOUNDINGLY much, it's like… AUUGH. They need to make out RIGHT NOW. And I also love Lili and Raz and thus think they should make out. (Hurhur. "I've been thinking about what you said—about us making out?" Oh Raz, you GO:D) So… it's about those four!

And it was so strange—before I found the vaults with Sasha's past in them? I was in his psyche, and cackled "Omg, SEE THE SHOES? I bet he was a cobbler's son. HAHA. I bet he was a poor cobbler's son! Let's write about it!" And… well. Lo and behold. o.o

I creep myself out sometimes.

Brrr.

-.-.-.-.-

Seasonal Greys

-.-.-.-.-

After clicking merrily around a corner of the white-walled TIS center, Milla straightened and clapped her hands as though she'd found a prize at the end of her hunt.

"Sasha, you're hiding!" she exclaimed, tap-tapping yet closer.

"Agent Vodello."

Her Berry Flirtatious lips puckered sadly when Sasha failed to look around or rise from his professional curl in one of the center's standard issue, but silly bowl chairs. The man looked like a great ink-blot in all this white, she thought, just waiting to have a test run on him. What do you see?

Whatever he wants you to see, that's what. Milla sighed, tucking away the mental burst of warmth she had been saving.

"Last names don't win many hearts, darling."

"That would be a problem—if such a thing were my job. Fortunately, it's yours," he said, then added, as a chaser to an already dry drink, "Vodello."

She shook off the mild offense with a small surge of felinity—her hair bustled comfortably as she settled against a desk. After plucking it from its convenient wandering near her ear, she watched him over her coffee cup (three pico-liters of dream-fluff, not one, and a healthy pink glow to show for it) as her tapered white fingers knitted over it.

"Really, Sasha, after all this time anyone would expect us to be on a first-name basis. We're adventuring partners! Such a thing does not leave you with an impersonal bond."

"You tend to concoct pet-names for associates and villains alike within moments of meeting them. Pity on me if I abstain." He said stiffly, moving one arm to stretch it.

Milla drooped like the swarthy tropical flower she was, plying him with wistful green eyes.

"Darling," she said quietly.

"Agent Darling is un-deployed at the moment, and would surely appreciate this misplaced attention—Agent Vodello, if you _please_."

Now she saw the problem—or rather, now he was uncollected enough to let small starbursts of it dart into her psychic net. Stress, hard and granular (the sand against her mental teeth, grating and crunching) littered the room. Sasha, sensing the presence of her net, repressed the leak with a swat of his hand, but not before an orange zigzag of frustration snapped out.

He did not glare at her (regardless of his glasses, any psychic would have felt the visual connection like a hand on a shoulder) but remained staring forward, ossifying at the computer consol. Agent Nein was infamous for his control; his shields alone were strong enough for several psychics at once. Standing there, Milla Vodello felt the iron liquor of his shields suffocate any and all waves in the empty Tech Intel Sector.

She paused, looking for a change that would and could not occur, and slowly turned on her white heels. The force of his shields left her chill and disoriented—completing the work his conduct had started.

"You musn't overwork yourself, Sasha." She warned him blankly. She tucked her coffee cup down by her leg, frowning at the featureless wall. "Sanity is our highest commodity."

_And a delicate one at that._

Sasha only brushed his oiled hair back from his face as the door closed, and the one manifestation of open-mouthed, orgasmic color departed. A tendril of nervous TK energy rooted around in his cigarette dish, long gone cold, and pulled out a dead stub. It hung in the air a moment, defeated.

His mind boiled for more than psyantium-laced nicotine.

The cigarette dropped into the mottled ash with a piff, energy strings cut.

Finally, he straightened and reached out into the screen in front of him, pulling his hands across the glossy surface in a handful of distinct, noiseless patterns. It warmed beneath his ministrations and began to glow a professional blue. Agent Nein drew off one wet-looking black glove, touched one finger to his temple and made the last few strokes with his free hand.

The screen lit.

The light was brief and startled, but it wasted down to a dirty grey. The color became textured, sandy—almost like an old movie—as though someone had TK'd Sasha's cigarette ash and sent it crashing over the screen.

Two gritty figures materialized, a lumpy product of the ash. One was a man, the other, a boy.

Their presence did not surprise Sasha, but spurred him to move closer, needle-thin elbows propped on the console. Still his hand remained pressed to his temple.

The boy already had a particular polygonal jut to his chin, young as he was, although the man had a weak face and a touch more chartreuse in his peeling skin. Both were dressed in ratty, coarsely woven jackets and blended perfectly with the thin, persistent filth of abandoned cities. Sasha Nein watched as they argued and paced furiously in the seedy warehouse.

"Sie können nicht mich zwingen!"

The old man's face filled with anger the color of sewage.

"Sprechen Sie nicht auf diese Art und Weise! Befolgen Sie!"

It was in a different language, of course, but that's how memories went.

Old Germany was another world entirely now, and he rarely spoke his mother language… all to save himself these sooty, suppressed memories. He had yelled in tongue more often than spoken. Alas, he was so well organized (and had such a complete lack of corners in his mindscape) that no cobwebs could be allowed to grow over these portions.

The memories carefully dangled before cadets inside the cantankerous, gamboling vaults? False.

Imposed, concocted, forged—whatever one wished to say. The products of the calculating little men in the Rethink Productions lab, who worked in professional suppression. They had reworked his father into a round, tragic shape with a fan of mustache and silver dollar glasses, and charmingly killed his mother with a mystery disease, molding Sasha himself into a _fictionally_ acceptable victim. One had to learn to overcome fabricated adversity, after all. The truth had dramatic flair, but never the right concoction of 'simple' and 'temporary' to be easily forgotten.

And the age—it was true that some psychics claimed their primordial memories sooner than others, but to produce concrete memories at such a young age, with no error or misconceptions? He would have to claim power and awakening equal to Gerard Croiset.

But they had kept some components for sincerity's sake. He truly was a cobbler's son.

Sasha watched as his father rose up like an old rickety beast and spit in the dirt next to him, creating a viscous dollop of mud. Shooting his son a vicious glare, he limped off to the corner that held his scant cobbling equipment. Illegal squatters in the darkest part of Dresden. Expected to make a living when there was no place to lead a life. Sasha Nein of the memory turned and sprinted out into the wet cigarette-ash streets.

The screen wavered.

Several scenes flashed by. Carded through, as though unimportant, they increased in brightness and detail as he grew older, but often featured only a single face or a sentence. Mostly hateful. It was a scattered little paper trail of his and his family's journey up in the world. Here and there, things stuck out. Assisted by the screen, he remembered the first shoe shop. His father's pride.

He remembered the long hours at the bench, coaxing tacks into perilous pirouettes onto the already scruffy bottoms of shoes—without his hands.

Something in his head did it for him—even though it was a lot of work—and whatever it was stopped a hammer from breaking his head open after it fell from a high shelf.

There lay boxes heaved in every direction, which he would fearfully clean up before his father appeared, but ominous most of all—a cast iron hammer hovered in the air above him, creaking gently left and right as if reined in by invisible strings. A puppet. He stared, and stared, until something inside him grew tired and let it drop with an ear-splitting ping. He did not touch it for days, and held his breath when his father dared to pick it up.

Despite the slightest suspicion or thrill or terror of practicing witchcraft, (close, dirty Germany knew superstition as a way of life, but knew nothing of psychics) he knew it had to be good, so he practiced secretively on tacks. And Sasha practiced, and practiced, and practiced.

He remembered being slapped and dashed against a wall and denied dinner for wasting time on the shoes.

"Unbrauchbarer Junge!"

It wasn't abuse. It was just how memories in Old Germany went. Time was money, and money was food. The need for either was not a very pretty thing for blooming young cadets to see.

Sasha lit another cigarette.

Finally, he remembered the Big Store. Run by people from Berlin, government padded. A would-be strapping thirteen, Sasha himself resembled a chewed-over strap of leather with dry knees poking out of his pants. Watching the beginnings of his new life carefully, he saw nothing but a deal cut with well-dressed snakes. Having his younger sister married off at age eleven (_elf_) to the storekeeper's young, brusque, closet-rapist son in return for residency was just the beginning.

The Tiffany lamps were just in from America, and kept in the corner. Very pricey.

"Sie verwenden uns!"

"Ja aber, wir kann jetzt überleben."

"Und Nadia ist die Zahlung?"

He had never been close with his sister. It was simply the indignity that hounded him.

And something else.

Sasha Nein held his cigarette and watched his younger image storm and spit in the lushly accessorized shop, doubled in clawing, cleaving spite as he wreaked his last argument upon his father. His memory self howled, gesturing sharply—and Sasha noted that his voice did not sound the same.

He sounded more like his father nowadays.

Finally, the nerve was exposed. In a screaming climax, his father's claim that he would have just as soon sold _him_ to get this far in life halted any natural resolution.

The boy grabbed hold of a table, unable and unwilling to listen. His father shouted more wildly, bearing down on his ninety-pound spawn. This only increased the well of violent input the blinded boy suddenly had access to, and he drew all the hate in with the air, unable to block any emotions. Vengeful yellow energy locked his joints. His square chin snapped down to his chest and his teeth clenched. He would have bitten his tongue clean off had his body not responded accordingly. When Detlef Nein moved to strike him, his knees went weak. When Detlef Nein's hand connected with his jaw, all hell broke loose. Years and years of dirty anger and deprivation broke loose.

Sasha Nein, age thirteen, temporarily shattered his psyche.

The Big Shop combusted. The clean white smash of glass roared up like the surf as every single lamp was viciously heaved from their doily-covered tables. The tables themselves followed, wallowing up against the walls as if blown there by a strong wind. His father was somewhere in the back. The entire shop capsized with the rage of a young psychic, now surrounded in putrid canary light.

But it wasn't enough.

The unbearable heat that had siphoned from his face and neck found home in small seeds of flame, which spread into starbursts and caught onto the tacky American-styled drapery like firewood.

All within moments, the screen broke up into panicked flashes of flame and torn wood and some nauseating feeling very much like regret, and the neon-wired warning meters in the TIS went wild: Sasha stilled them with a hand, wrist twitching, and pushed his mind past those primordial memories. Everyone was warned not to introduce traumatic memories into the system. It stressed the components.

Unfortunately, there was gash in his psyche, like a rip in a tape, which one simply had to push past. Inaccessible, dark.

The screen began to clear up with piles of broken pricey American Tiffany glass and smoldering wood. The little colored panes had fallen from their wiring, leaving clusters of articulate framing that resembled black, insidious honeycomb. His lacerated hands shifted in front of him, slowly scraping and filling and moving. Bag after bag. Krystalnacht.

Sasha pressed onward, now comfortably clear of the rip.

Ford Cruller.

Agent Ford Cruller on a couch, sitting as close to the boy as he dared. He'd laughed and said any Psychonaut within an ocean of him could have felt that little hissy fit and come running. He had happened to be in Africa at the time, so… there you go. Mediterranean only, and no hearing in one ear to prove it. Lucky, aren't we?

Lucky, in their relatives moldering brown living room and a live of servitude ahead of them. Sasha had not known what a Psychonaut was, nor did he care. He had broken the Big Shop doing something hellish and unnamable and now his family would not touch him. A history of life and gritty cohabitation, meager as it was, was deleted entirely by this one act.

Sasha Nein almost smiled as the boy stumbled from his seat and stalked toward the door, only to have his feet leave the dirt floor as he reached for the knob. A shout of surprise, a curse, and he clung to the frame while his family gasped behind him; he felt the crosses being made against their chests and gave a vicious kick of his feet.

Cruller gave a laugh from the couch, which came out as a tumbling, lopsided wheeze.

"Come on down now, boy."

Feeling the intent tug on his lower half (and somehow seeing a visceral arrow, a disconnected line in his mind) he clenched his eyes and did _something_. The forbidden snap happened inside his head, and a jar swerved off the table and lurched in the general direction of Ford's head. He grunted and twisted like a fish as he pushed it toward the man from his gut, still clinging with all his might and broken fingernails.

Ford only laughed louder, and the jar never crashed. Something feather-light plucked the jar from Sasha's tense, orange control, and the surprise was enough to loosen his grip. Never sagging toward the ground, he was unhooked and came floating over, mouth open, to flop down onto the couch. Ford put an arm around his bony shoulders before he could run again.

"You're a little old for Camp Whispering Rock, Sasha my boy." He wheezed, giving him a friendly rattle, then letting loose a hooting cackle Sasha had never heard the like of before. "But as far as you've managed to get without us, I'm sure we'll find something for you to do."

The fact he could understand the man even as he spoke in a different language was strange enough. He had no reason to trust this stranger who claimed these yet stranger things. But sitting there beside rickety, strange-smelling Ford Cruller, facing the blank spot that was his family, Sasha Nein felt awkward, rebellious, hateful and, above all, safe.

"After all, there's always cabins to clean."

Then the scene changed, and the black train was so very appropriate.

They were sending him away. Ford would have taken him himself, but he had urgent 'Naut business to attend to, and left Sasha to experience his own funeral. His mother and father stared at him from the grey station decks. They stared without love or hate, but maintained a strange, detached fascination with the impersonal threat. Him. When he could no longer abide their blank, aghast faces, he shut the smog-smeared window and sat back in his seat. The train squealed.

He did not see his sister. Perhaps she was killed in the fire.

He was a Psychadet now, whatever that meant.

The details ran in rivulets of blankness down the memory, secretively palming others from his peripheral vision and adding to the landslide of vagueness. There was no emotional stimulation on the long train-ride to the next station and then on the boat to Whispering Rock, and thus no consolidation of the memory. Sasha sat staring at the globular collection of confusing greys, and finally took his hand from his temple. The screen irised out, and the Core seemed to give a grateful whirr.

Sasha crumpled the remainder of his half-smoked cigarette into the ash, stood up, and teleported out of the TIS room.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Milla, my dear, it's not like you to be sad."

Agent Vodello, coaxed to sit down, waved her hand in answer to the rust-colored man beside her. Agent Darling (Agent Oliverne John Darling, to be correct) was a horizontal little PR expert with a generous cotton-candy swirl of beard and not much else—even his eyebrows were bare. It was as though all the hair on his head had migrated to his chin to be whipped up into a mess of butter yellow. He smiled kindly at her, settling down in a chair of his own.

"It's nothing," she said wistfully.

She had not looked for him, despite Agent Nein's stab—he had found her on his own. It was true, Milla had always been one of his favorites.

"You forget who you're talking to."

Oliverne Darling was a true empath, and a highly valued employee because of it. The tiniest slip in emotion was an open door for him, and with receiving came transmission: he could insert opportune seeds of thought into adversaries so easily and secretively, then cultivate them so carefully, anyone would stake their life on the fact that they themselves came up with the idea. He sculpted enthusiasm, made the mind absorb the idea, and quieted any censors. An ideal skill for swaying people to accept the damages that came with their line of work.

He may not have raised a Telekinetic finger in twenty years, he always said, but the many hands of others made for anything but light work in his line of business.

A stubby rust finger tapped at his face.

"Tell me, are your shields on vacation?"

Without raising her chin, Milla let the gel of her light shields close her in again and looked at her pointed feet. They clicked together, white and lacquered and toy-like. Her clothes always made her appeal to children.

"Sorry," she murmured. Her tropical lilt, sorrowfully condensed in such a word, weighted Agent Darling's mound-like brows. He sighed.

"One of these days I'll have to beat Nein with a stick—you know that don't you?"

"Darling!" Milla yipped, sitting straighter in her bowl chair.

"That's my name, Milla," he said wryly. When she slopped back in defeat, he touched her on the shoulder with a yellow-occluded smile. "And I never get tired of hearing it."

She rubbed her forehead, then let her white hand settle across her neck, as if to keep her words and thoughts in check. She sighed.

"I don't know what to do."

"Well, I can only say this, dear. If you don't know what to do, that's fixable. It's when you don't know what to _think_ that we have a problem."

"It's not a problem, it's a..." Milla trailed pointedly, then looked down, as if suddenly struck by something. "Did you know he still won't call me by my first name?"

"Give Sasha some time, Milla," Darling groaned as he popped himself out of his bowl seat. He shifted back and forth, patting his slacks. "You know he always gets shifty around this time of year."

-.-.-.-

"I can't do this."

Raz's voice, now accessing the well of pre-pubescent pitches and dives, rasped out of the mic.

"Razputin, there is nothing to say you cannot do this."

"I can't, I—I'm gonna lose it, Sasha."

"Your phobia is secondary here. You are in my mind," his instructor explained, and took a moment to concentrate the sentence. It echoed, solid and protecting. "The environment is completely under my control—therefore, you must not interfere. You are broadcasting your fears and influencing the water. Stigma and inductive reasoning are holding you back."

Corporeal water is cursed, therefore all water must be cursed.

It was strange water anyways. Built off of Sasha's memories of water, and the man surely hadn't been near a nice beach in ages. It was slightly smoky, and looked scientifically impossible sloshing around in the circus-round tub. _Add to that the fact that two bulb-fingered hands are sticking out of the greasy mess and you have yourself a weird picture,_ Raz thought.

"Continue, Razputin."

"What'll happen if I—" and Raz broke to yell out in surprise as the comical hands rooted hungrily in the air beneath him. "What'll happen if I die in your head?"

"It is my psyche, not my physical skull. And you will not die," Agent Nein replied.

"Rasputin—" The ghastly water moaned conveniently, which caused Raz to all but petrify on the ladder.

"So you mean I'll come back?"

"No, I mean you will NOT die, because you will now complete this exercise with very little prodding," he repeated testily.

"Would you feel anything if I did?" Raz asked breathily, clearly focused on distracting his instructor.

"Now is not the time for idle chatter of death, Razputin," Sasha grit sharply, "Step into the water."

"I guess he'd feel something if he had to come out and kill me." Raz muttered under his (very scant) breath. Wondering exactly how a corporeal manifestation of an astral projection would feel in a violent situation… he took another step down the ladder. He concentrated so hard he could feel his real body tingling right where he had left it—in a chair next to Agent Nein's similarly motionless form.

The water did not move to overtake him.

One cream-colored foot, then another, and the silent water made sense because it WAS Sasha's head. His teacher wouldn't let anything so chaotic happen to him. Sharp motions, violent things, jiggling, and rattling sensations simply did not occur in Agent Nein's grey-scale, geometric mind.

Raz's foot slipped and sloshed into the water. breaking some sort of pact with his life-long enemy.

The arms snapped up and lashed across his head, pulling his neck in two as iron water surged into his mouth and nose with the force of a jet. His arms immediately whipped off the ladder to pull at the painful, intrusive obstruction—he was flipped backwards, legs banging and catching painfully between the rungs of the ladder—his ankle twisted, crack—the water wrenched mercilessly--

He continued to scream for a moment after Sasha cut the simulation.

He lay, shocked and unnervingly dry, on an abrupt metal table. A crisply contained green vortex opened next to him, and dark, angular Sasha stepped out onto the mental plane beside him. The elder Psychonaut stood with his arms at his side, not crossed. Raz's hand immediately went to rub at his face.

"Sorry," he muttered.

Sasha refused to look at him. He turned, conscious gaze glazing the boy over as he turned away. At some other time in the year, he might have apologized as well—exposed both his logic faults and regret to the young boy for putting him in such a situation. Raz only heard the click of glasses, and the squeak of rubber gloves cleaning them.

"Your phobia is overwhelming," Agent Nein said flatly. Raz could feel his eyes someplace far away.

"It _has_ been with me my whole life. Curse, y'know," he said, somewhat sheepishly. His older voice returned, though it was nothing to boast of. He squeaked to the edge of the table, toward his mentor. "What, is there a cure?"

"Perhaps, had we caught you younger," Sasha said heavily. He pushed his glasses back onto his nose, but his chin remained against his chest.

Solemn though he may have been, Razputin had never seen Sasha so ghostly.

"Agent Nein?" Raz tried softly.

Without warning, Sasha disappeared.

"Agent… Nein? Sasha?"

The grey scape of Sasha's white matter shifted and wavered calmly around the block, as though all was still well. Razputin Aquato sat for an empty, startling moment, waited a few more for good measure, then pulled out his long unused smelling-salts and disappeared with a brief sound of disgust.

Winter never did go over well with Sasha Nein.


	2. Namesake

A/N: Hey-de-ho tharr! I fixed all the continuity/canon errors I could, and simultaneously came up with some pretty neat ideas :3 (SEE? I have no idea where this is going, told you!)

As for one question, Sasha's canon-connection with Tiffany lamps come from his mindscape's shooting gallery, which Raz indulged in to earn his badge. The targets are the lamps (which Sasha claims are one of his greatest fears, and "So… TACKY, can't look!" XD). In my 'verse, there's perhaps an inseparable connection between the lamps and the act of shattering them as he did so long ago. They're the one kind of semi-suppressed ammunition his mind never runs out of! (Plus I think he's had some serious suppression work done on him anyways, due to the if-comical appearance of that HUGE censor in the game)

SO YES. I so, so thank Digital Dreamer and anyone else who planted such heavy compliments on me: coming into a new fandom like this, it was SUH much more than I'd hoped for! (As for your request, DD, I'd love to, and will try—but I'm currently biting off more in life than a raptor could chew, so no bets will be made XD Thank you, though!)

Okay, so there's some history too. I might be heavily screwing with Psychonauts canon? But I tend to do that. SIT BACK AND ENJOY :D And I promise Lili and Raz will come into the scene pretty soon!

I hope to post some concept-doodles of Milla and Sasha and pretty much the whole cast on my homepage later, so wish me luck and time to do so! Enjoy!

-.-.-.-.-

Namesake

-.-.-.-.-

Camp Whispering Rock wasn't a camp at all.

It was a swaying line for parents, if they were reluctant to release their children into the hands of any one of the curiously colored (and often delicately deranged) Psychonaut agents upon their calling. If so, the psychics Tagged the deceptive name—a technique of inserting a particular emotion or, rarely, a visual prompt to accompany a word—and carefully persuaded overprotective parents to release their young by employing high concentrations of safety, confidence, and a dab of paternal warmth. It almost always worked.

To this day, Sasha grimly questioned if his parents even listened to a word Ford had spoken.

Camp Whispering Rock was not just an propaganda-pumped alias; it stood for something. C.W.R.: the first letter, 'cadet', was all the children had ever figured out. Cadet Weakening Rodeo, Cadet Wimpy Rack, the ideas went on and on, but all the children ever knew was that it was no camp-- although there was no shortage of rocks. A nearly year-round institution, it was lodged in an undisclosed location somewhere in upper Europe; children sometimes played out in the generous forests, but were blindfolded with mental blockers on the train-ride up. Not for their own sake or any sense of mystique, of course, but if any enemy of the Psychonauts claimed a child, god forbid, tapping the location of the CWR out of their unshielded brains would be laughably easy.

CWR was, by nature of its institution, a subterranean training camp.

There was no other place to keep so many psychic children and shield the rest of the world from their mistakes (or the forthcoming radiation), but the solid earth accepted the burden silently. The only side-effect suffered by the environment had been a new species of tree with the ability to set other trees on fire—which, Darling thought, while ridiculous, revealed an exorbitantly violent and petty side of trees no one had ever quite seen before.

There was an incineration every other day, dealt particularly by the pine trees. They were the crazy lot, and thus the students at CWR had come to expect a lot less tradition out of Christmases: any pine tree cut from its moorings and dragged away would inexorably set fire to itself, as though flaunting their efforts to take it alive and throttle it with tinsel by exercising a modern, toasty form of seppuku. While the forest had its quirks, life went on at the ill-named Camp Whispering Rock.

The trainers and their trainees worked together to bring brilliant new psychic agents into the world, regardless of the stoic surroundings. Many years passed before HQ actually paid heed to, far, far away in the forests of America, the strange, sporadic reports from campers concerning bears. Not just any bears; bears who apparently always accompanied hauntings—trees uprooted, or swattings by invisible forces. A place that had been abandoned for ages suddenly made news after one death in the forest, with the survivors (sufficiently unhinged) rambling about malicious squirrels. That was enough for the PN's official interest. Upon inspection, some sort of psychoactive material had been at work on the nearby animals for ages, and the reports of high numbers of deranged citizens admitted to the nearby Asylum made them yet more curious.

Sasha, Milla and Oliverne were organized in the citing and instituting of the camp, after HQ strenuously researched its past using inanimate empaths and confirmed the lure of psitanium. The local government, all too ready to palm off the plot of cursed land for free, handed the grounds over without a struggle. They'd flooded it, drove cables through the rock layers, done all they could to rid the ground of the psitanium and its pervasive insanity, and they were done trying. Later, they credited themselves for the idea of a summer camp.

The Psychonauts established their land-claim half a year after Ford Cruller's psyche had been shattered in a psychic duel.

Sasha and Milla snuck the ailing Ford Cruller in within a month. After tucking him inside a yet-undiscovered hollow that glowed an electric purple, his swings between violently spewing psychic shocks and lying comatose lessened and finally ceased. Broken sentences were roused but a month after. Oleander stayed with the incapacitated man when the two at-their-prime psychic agents could not manage it.

When Camp Whispering Rock was actually founded, as an actual summer camp in an actual camp environment, it found a strange serendipity in its ignorantly given name and settled there, comfortable as a cat with its cushion. It was sparingly staffed, and even then the employees were swapped: those with sensitive psyches found they could not sleep within a mile of the psitanium-packed rock layers and all of the psychic feedback, and suffered from sloppy techniques because of it.

For those just beginning to develop their abilities, however, it was a perfect conduit. It boosted, magnified, and gave results in a matter of weeks. A child at Camp Whispering Rock could accomplish in a month what took a child at the old CWR institution four months. This way, the idea of a summer camp was completely valid. Afterwards, any energy was reabsorbed back into the psitanium, creating a perfect cycle with no increase of psychoactive radiation, keeping the nearby cities unharmed.

For those with a lack of control, or too little psychic energy, psitanium is perfect. For those with training to resist, psitanium is to be tolerated; Sasha Nein takes psitanium-laced cigarettes in order to fight off the slight addiction he gained from his time as a PN Attendant at Camp Whispering Rock. For those with overly sensitive psyches and burgeoning internal psychic stores, psitanium is obnoxious, constantly active and busy.

To those with no psychic abilities, psitanium meant insanity. The way Oliverne saw it, by taking the plot of land out of the local Handsies grip, the Psychonauts were doing the world a favor.

-.-.-.-.-

She had already made friends with every child, because that's how she was.

She talked to the shy ones so they didn't have to respond, she flattered the vain ones, she danced with the crazy ones, she laughed with the gossipers. She was energy, she was warmth, she was a three-time winner of Little Miss Beach and could ride a goat with some actual vestige of style. There were a few children who had somehow strayed outside her affable net, and felt themselves distinctly out in the cold for it (perhaps due to some fault of theirs), but she was simply a busy, beautiful, lanky nine-year-old with pointed white cowboy boots and a crush on the oldest boy in camp.

"Why is he still _here_?" Mitsche Campbell whined, as though everything down to his shoes—the only mottled part of him left in one piece, ironically—offended her. She shook out her soufflé-like hair, and turned her pink nose up in the air. She came from a none-too-rich immigrant family in the Java islands heavily based in fishing, but she wouldn't tell anyone that. Scraggly grey teenager Sasha Nein, accepting his lunch from the bubble-shaped cafeteria-mistress without lifting his head, just begged to be mocked.

"Maybe he's a teacher," Milla tried reverently, proposing it more to the air to the left of Mitsche's bowl-sized ear rather than Mitsche herself. "He's come back to help us."

"He's not _that_ old, and all he does in class is stare like a goldfish," her friend scoffed, then saw the glazed look on Milla's heart-shaped face. "Or are you looking for a private lesson?" She simpered.

Whereas before, Milla would have bounced the comment back with her particular feminine spunk, (the friend-choosing rituals of young girls circled around this curious banter of half-insults and presumed barbs, most boys assumed. Those females who could not snark sufficiently would be left friendless) she merely skittered back when the boy began to turn around, then darted forward, snatching up Mitsche's arm with her already-long fingers. Her friend squealed as Milla dashed toward the door with her in tow.

"Let's go back to the other room, I think I forgot something—"

"_What_?" Mitsche wailed, finding it hard to snark over Milla's persistent little boot-taps.

Ten minutes later, it was established that Milla had not indeed forgotten anything, the two girls had lost their place in the Great Wall of Lunch Line and so Mitsche refused to speak to Milla the rest of the day.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Whereas the grey surroundings of CWR often infected the children residing there with melancholy or bland dress, there was at least one child who had an immunity to anything grey-scale. Agent Darling turned around in his desk to face the little mocha-skinned imp.

"Well, aren't you just the cutest thing?"

Oliverne didn't dislike the word 'darling' as an endearment: he had simply learned to avoid it, and the _knowing_ looks snuck by everyone who heard it.

As if they'd gotten the joke, when there, indeed, was no joke.

Milla skipped happily in place—a boisterous spark of levitation energy got away with her, and several of her boot-swings failed to connect with the ground. Oliverne put out a hand, woah-ing gruffly and smiling as the little girl snapped her pizzazz back down like a folding fan and made herself compact, looking dubiously up at him. She had magnificent green eyes and a dress rimmed with preposterous half-dollar sequins. He couldn't help but smile looking at her.

"What's your name?"

"Milla Vodello," she answered him, then followed with a stout little singsong: "With double Ls each time."

He knew instinctively this was the type of girl who would spend hours doodling her own signature on pink paper. He knew the kind of loopy Ls she would use, as well.

Milla cocked her head.

"Are you cheating?"

"What?"

"Inside my head."

He merely jutted his chin out as a secondary way of questioning her.

"I just saw my name the way I would write it," she said slowly, extending an arm and drawing fat icing-loops on an imaginary cake in explanation.

"Oh." He blustered and sat back in his chair. All children were taught that intruding unannounced into another student's mind was a form of cheating. It certainly reduced the number of dramas around camp, what with all the grudges children keep quiet about. "Aren't you perceptive! Sorry, darling."

Her only acknowledgement of the ever-present joke was a quirk of her mouth. Already Oliverne appreciated her confident, yet blind tact. But she had taken to teetering on her small white boot-heels, and tugging on various bits of plastic jewelry, and so he looked her in the face and smiled openly.

"Can I ask you a question, Mr. Darling?" She asked after a moment. One hand strayed to the perky pirouettes of that day's hairstyle, the spires of which were spun with blue tinsel.

"Absolutely, Milla," he answered.

"What is that older boy doing here?"

The question was unexpected, and caused him to bite his lip. Agent Darling had indeed been told very little about Sasha.

Ford had waltzed in, and (with not a few of his trademark, squalling hoots) barked proudly that the boy was a ticking time bomb, a bit loony and a damn natural at anything they could think up, then dumped the gaunt child in 'their capable hands'. Although he and Ford had worked together for quite a few years, Oliverne never quite read the manual on the man, though it was his fondest wish that one should exist to help the less fortunate at speaking 'Ford-ese', and the level of cleaning and up-keep that Ford himself required. Worse than a hamster, in most ways.

But the boy was a strange one.

In most countries, there existed some form of clinic or refuge for those barely beginning to understand their psychic powers—or even the existence of them. There were pamphlets by the Psychonauts, the Mental Support for Youth, Society for the Promotion of Psychics and Empaths and many others. While psychic abilities usually ran in families, and were predictable, often an anomaly popped up and called agents like Ford to sacrifice their off-time: after tracking the children down, they informed young Psi-cadets of their life and options. What with the introduction speech agents were required to memorize, the entire process was comically similar to one discovering the fact that one has diabetes, or some other such lifelong condition. The reactions of Recessive Psycho-allele Carriers (aka, the parents) were all across the board.

Oliverne had known the man who often made housecalls to parents with 'Red' emergencies, which entailed anything from large-scale pyrokineses accidents to the god-fearing riots they often inspired in superstitious countries. From the stories, he would have loved to have seen the expression on the usual Concerned But Petrified Mommy and Daddy's faces when they explained (quietly, reluctantly, pallid faces pinched) to Raphael Killjoy that Jimmy had not been—no, sneaking out of the house, not swearing, nor seen with dirty magazines, but making things _float_.

It was a whole separate terror to parental authority, when one could no longer simply keep the cookies on a high shelf.

Even as the situation became well-accepted in his own home, Oliverne had obtained his fair share of peculiar warnings. The sight of his father blustering "Use your hands, damnit! I'll find some way to tie up that damn brain of yours if you can't use the handle like everyone else!" after he came back from training delighted with his TK abilities was forever a tribute to odd reprimands.

But to have a boy so under the radar and so far from kindred psychic help was incredible. Of all horrors, there had been no birth record of him. This was only common of the lowest of—and Darling dared use the term only as it fit-- serfs. Serfs, in their common day and age. After knowing the violent chain of events preceding the boy's discovery, the Empath cited serfdom as the reason the furniture shop his family moved into had priced their tenancy so very high: the cost at the time for being discovered with unregistered 'Straße Kobold'—street goblins—was formidable, as modern chattel-transport was suspected.

As with all new children, Darling had done his homework.

The Psychonauts had agreed to register Sasha in FPP (Future Protector of Peace) amnesty the moment he became a trainee at CWR, but Oliverne had heard no word of how that went. All he saw was what went on each day at camp, and how the new boy failed to cope. Sasha himself was starved, tall and slightly obedient. Most times, although all students had been given a generous dose of their first babel-radiation to make international language barriers almost painless, he refused to speak—but there was nowhere near enough energy in the act to be called 'refusal'. He was stoic, an odd, unhealthy color and seemed to radiate that same grungy hue of psycho-energy. His levitation ball was sour with bad energy, and boiled to maintain its shape, although he maintained the most incredible shields Agent Darling had seen in years.

Oliverne realized he had been thinking far too long when Milla, movie-star eyes still set on his face, was halfway through tapping out "Oh, When the Saints Come Marching In" with her tiny heels in front of him.

"He's here to learn, of course" Oliverne said, then added with a—just barely Tagged—twinkle, "Just like you and myself."

"But he's old," she said suspiciously, as though she knew he had not quite answered her question. The Tag bounced off her. Oliverne could almost hear it rattle on the floor like a dropped plastic bracelet. He tapped his hand on his armrest. An odd day when thirteen was considered old.

"He just came a little late, that's all."

"Well. Is he going away anytime soon?"

"I don't think so," Oliverne said slowly.

"'Kay."

There was a pause as she looked around, as though taking down extra notes of the surroundings for a diary, memoir, or other such fluff that was written in sweet little notebooks with plastic locks and keys. Agent Darling certainly didn't want to interrupt her brainstorm.

"Thank you, Mr. Darling, but I have to get to lunch now." She said self-importantly, as though the Ambassador of Foreign Affairs were waiting for her at a low-slung metal bench, to dine on macaroni and cheese alongside her.

"Alright, Milla," he conceded warmly, watching her sprint off, and thought playfully, _I'm sure the ambassador will be upset if you're late._

It was that day that Milla tried sitting next to Sasha Nein.

He left after seven minutes in her bright red company, half-eaten soup left where it stood, bread nonchalantly inserted in his tattered jacket. Milla dutifully took both her and his plate to the disposal after she finished her own lunch in silence.

Every child in the cafeteria watched her do it, and a small vendetta mushroomed overnight.

"Why do you even want to talk to him? He never says anything," Mitsche demanded with the outrage best suited for the elected speaker of the gaggle of students rallying against Ms. Milla Vodello.

"Why do you care so much?" Milla returned brusquely, "He's just a kid like us!"

"He's thirteen." The word was two separate, taboo-shot grunts. As though the word 'teen' in any associate's age was worth total isolation, which the Rebellion had indeed touched upon in their discussion earlier that day. Mitsche snorted. "I can't believe you're wasting your time!"

Milla fumed, several objects nearby rattling in warning. Then she stomped off, finding nothing more to say to the nasty, bowl-eared, pig-nosed girl who had been her closest friend ten minutes previous.

All those who had flourished and giggled under Milla's attention grew cold to her when they saw whom the object of her attentions was. It was brief—as the rock-encrusted campers soon learned they could not thrive in the metal cage of CWR without Milla's infectious light, and came creeping back like nocturnal pests—but Milla learned no lesson.

She quietly hounded Sasha Nein all through that year, and the next.


	3. Work

A/N: Hooray! Back again!

Oh, I'm so loving writing for this fandom XD I just… adore it! You are all so sweet, and encourage me likewoah. Hearts!

Lili and Raz make a strange little entrance, and you will see why THEY ARE SO SAD. Although I don't like how they appear here D: Lili seems too flat. I only like the first part of the chapter.

Though I can't wait for the next few chapters! ENJOI.

-.-.-.-.-

Work

-.-.-.-.-

He was required to skim the histories, if just for a warning, but no dry histories could have truly prepared him for _this_ mind.

It wasn't deranged, exactly. There were figments and vaults of a wacky nature: fifteen frames, all identical. The hunched egg of a small child filled each one, staring rapturously at a TV screen, receiving his religion in radiant red implosions and the humming hymn of intergalactic communicators. The only thing that changed was the clock—the diminutive hands spun round and round, encompassing a whole thirty-three hours.

He'd reviewed that particular one a good four times before it sunk in.

This guy had science fiction movies and cartoons as babysitters. He'd turned out twisted, understandably—or twisted with a twist, Raz thought, as the whole 'mental instability' thing didn't exactly help the situation. He had just latched onto science fiction as an escape (and later a weapon), and his mindscape was a literal shrine to it. Space-stations, forsaken planets millions of miles away, evil overlords and laser beams: Otto Timeron operated in a completely different sphere of reality, and thus his mind was a little more… well, interactive.

Raz liked this a good deal. It was almost like being in that one issue of Psychonauts: Beyond the Astralsphere, where the heroes had gotten stuck inside of the cartoonist of a popular space-comic series, only to find out he'd been a psychic for, like, ever. Once discovered, the villain gave them an octane-pumped and very sci-fi run for their money. The Psychonauts had barely gotten out with what they needed, and Raz had read the issue about 20 times.

For the first time in a good while, he felt like he was living his childhood dreams.

Otto's mind was an insane collage of the most popular science fiction stuff ever, and so, being a fan himself, Raz was able to appreciate most of it with a grain of smelling salt: it was rather like re-watching all the movies. On acid. Through the eyes of an enthusiast who had never had a date in all his thirty years of life.

Kind of creepy, kind of fun. But he had to admit: the jetpacks? Very cool.

The entire neon-laced scenario had also provided him a change of attire: he now wore a devilishly shiny bodysuit of sorts, complete with a forked cape and a funny hat. The hat had to go, of course, but Raz appreciated the cape and its inevitable swish. All of it made him feel quite evil, and also a little reluctant to end the battle: but alas, all the foreshadowing and telltale signs of rising action of about twenty storylines had come to an end.

Now, he was smack in the middle of the inevitable climax. Some galactic rebellion had come to a head, the forces were rising up against the evil that lorded them (none other than himself, the average-height, stick of a boy named Razputin the Hatless), and the future of a galaxy would be decided in a series of moments.

Blah, blah, blah.

Raz contented himself with viewing his black, star-peppered kingdom through the glass that topped his disco-floor control panels and listening to the sounds of an approaching plot device.

"Princess Piklooloo—are you alright, Princess Piklooloo?!"

The Psychonaut stuck his tongue out, mimicking the cry. Ah, these lone heroes and their easily-intercepted transmissions. Princess Pikalooloo wailed on the other line, adjuring him to come to her aid, quickly, quickly!

"Hold on, Piklooloo!"

With a dramatic echo to boot.

And then, Razputin (Nefarious Galactic Overlord, Razpitooni the 3rd, he substituted cheekily) espied the reflection of an epic struggle in his wide, bubbled windows. A familiarly egg-shaped young man fought for his life against a hoard of white cyborgs, dodging cherry-red laser beams until—_nyoo_-- he fell through the nearby gate and it sealed behind him. He was now trapped with his arch-enemy. The only sounds in the cavernous (and cartoonishly plum-colored) chamber were that of Otto tumbling head over heels. When he came to a stop, Razputin took a step forward, and steam billowed from under his heel.

"Otto—" he rumbled, voice gaseous and evil.

Otto screamed like a child, but soon pressed himself against a pillar, clutching his double-ended laser-chucks to his chest. He took a step forward, levying the forcefully fictional weapon.

"Who are you!?" He demanded. The sounds of the Squall-Troopers attempting to infiltrate the chamber banged on and on, but tension crackled between the two.

"So you want to know who I am, Otto?" Raz demanded, drawing a deep, rattling breath. "Look upon your maker!"

Razpitooni turned sharply, arms folded across his chest. The cape went: SWISH-swish-swoo. Razputin vaguely wished he had a mirror, but the look on his nemises' acne-pocked face was enough.

It was a moment before clammy blue Otto spoke.

"Y-you're not my father!" He blubbered, dumbstruck.

"That's right!" Raz cackled, throwing his arms up and wiggling his fingers. "I'm your uncle!"

Otto's eyes bugged out of his head. A second passed. The background music resumed with a hearty trumpet blast, and Otto the Magnificent Rebel leapt forward again.

"I don't care who you are! You foul creature! You want to kill Piklooloo and I can't forgive any man or beast who aspires to such a horrible task!"

Razputin no longer considered prolonging the situation. He couldn't stand much more canned dialogue. He stepped forward again, the steam quick forthcoming. His hands raised again, but instead of doing anymore wiggling or even jedi-mindtricking, one of them descended—descended—descended-- and came to rest inches above an astoundingly big red button. There was no label, as all big red shiny buttons have the same purpose.

Otto gasped.

"I will destroy my own ship in order to defeat you, Otto."

"You wouldn't!" Otto growled, once again raising the weapon. He took a pseudo-judo stance, short legs spread far apart.

"Yes, I would," Razputin countered, raising a hand to jam down the appealing red button. He was very serious, and Otto seemed to realize this (the underscore realized it too, and quickly came to a flourishing halt).

"…No!" Otto tried again, wailing.

"Yes." Raz said patiently.

"No, you wouldn't!"

"Yes, I would!" Raz mocked him, getting impatient. It took a moment for The Hero's eyes to travel from his hand to the button, then back again. Then back. Then forth. He seemed at a loss. To help him along, Raz arched an eyebrow and spelled it out for him.

"I will push the button. And destroy my ship. And my legacy."

"But… that's my job!" Otto protested, fat hands bunching under his chin. His weapon fell to the ground.

Raz smirked impishly.

"You're fired."

The pleather-wrapped hand came down, the steam festooned the air, and Otto screamed. The scene shrunk down like a whirlpool, leaving Raz unharmed as all the galaxies and battles and fantasies whipped from under his feet, leaving an inky black. Everything condensed to a single, floating object. Plans for the laserbeam Otto had begun work on, and now would never finish. The Psychonaut snatched them out of the air and tore them end-to-end. The fragments starbursted into nothingness.

"Thank you, come again," Raz said, not without a pound of snark. He kicked up his cape and disappeared.

The pretense at world domination was effectively annihilated. Mr. Otto Timeron would now be spending a placid life in an assisted living home with good comics, lots of TV, and a pointed lack of evil plots. This Psychonaut's job was done.

His curse of humming Nova War's 'Death Parade' for three days, however, had only just begun.

-.-.-.-.-

Lili had gone into research.

Despite her go-gettum attitude, she preferred mild reconnaissance work once she became a Psychonaut. There was action enough in the minds she rifled through, and many peculiar things to keep her satisfied. The entire set-up seemed different from the loud munchkin who had plunged forward into the brain-thefty unknown with Raz so many years ago, but it seemed to work for her. She was doing well. Growing up with Truman Zanotto as a father, she had every reason to do well.

No one spoke of Truman Zanotto.

She was slender, wore strange Chinese tops, short jackets and Mary Janes and long socks. Her attire clashed pleasantly—just enough to draw attention—just like the lumpy friendship bracelet of so long ago. It had all the right colors, but in unexpected places.

Razputin had never known a more beautiful girl in his life. There were no two ways about it, and he wasn't slow to admit it. HQ wasn't exactly brimming with beautiful women (Milla was hounded by several men at all hours, and Milka had actually grown up into a good-looking blonde) and Lili never failed to stand out.

Her hair was drawn up into a bun most days, and only left loose on formal occasions. He had seen it down—and her dazzling aquamarine dress and her bare shoulders and her loosely belted waist while oblivious Milla, who had taken _him_, laughed off their own age-gap with a playful kiss to his cheek—at a Psychonauts awards ceremony, at which he received two medals of Valor for Youth.

She received one.

Implausible, fervent guilt picked at his gut the entire night. He had waited for half an hour at the exit to the awards hall, just to apologize with the medals heavy in his hands, but lost his nerve. He escaped the second she started toward him. He didn't know what he was apologizing for anyways. Might've seemed like a jerk for doing it. Somehow.

He, Razputin Aquatis, was now a Psychonaut. An official Agent in deed if not in name, as the Head had not exactly believed nor validated Ford's squiring of him; he had been named a licensed Psychonaut just last year. He'd lost count of the times Vodello and Nein had taken him along on missions and let him take part in heavy field work. He'd proved invaluable, some times. It was very, very hard to be proven invaluable in the company of those two, and he had even saved a life or twenty in the process. A good kid. Raz had every reason to be proud of how far he'd come in the past six years.

While the excitement of the field never died, it was returning to HQ that he felt the most useless. Lili Zanotto was doing well, happy as far as he could see, and that should have been enough concerning everything that had happened.

She even had a boyfriend.

One Friday, Raz had seen Lili and a tall young man converge in the hallway. Usually Lili slid ahead to suit her narrow pace, but they stayed side-by-side, inconspicuously brushing elbows. Complete normalcy was retained until the dam burst and Lili shoved the boy, short and sharp, and ran off down the hallway. The other 'Naut took off after her, a fluid rage in his step, and Raz had started forward and mashed his fingers on the glass, looking for all the world like a horror-struck visitor to the zoo witnessing the carnage particular of a python or alligator.

The moment the young man caught up with her, and—far from assaulting the willowy girl—picked her up and squeezed her, Razputin Aquato decided with a stomach full of lead that he could tackle anything but Lili Zanotto.

-.-.-.-.-

Just back from the Timeron case, Raz took a detour to the kitchen to stock up on some citrus energy stuff. No matter how thrilling, he always had to top off any joyride in the astral plane with an Orange Punch. He drained it, feeling the bubbles swarm to the roof of his mouth, and relaxed against the wall to let it take effect. He drowsed, but jerked around the second he saw _her_ reflection in the opposite window, cramming his cup to his lips. Nevermind that it was empty.

Had to appear unconcerned.

She TK'd the door, absently applying a little too much force. It bounced against the wall, but she still entered with her head low, attending to something in her hands. A list. Probably just come from seeing Marc-bunny off somewhere.

She went straight for the storage cupboards, opening them at random with her back to him. Razputin unstuck himself from the wall and, very carefully, inched into her line of vision.

He realized with a jolt that Lili had left her hair loose.

"Hey," he started brightly.

She turned her head, saw him, and shook a piece of hair out of her eyes. She returned to the cupboards.

"Hey."

Already she was effortlessly driving him off. He watched her as she hunted the cups and powder she needed for whatever superior's drink she was fetching.

"How come you're here?" He tried again, inserting a baseless grin into his voice.

"What does it look like I'm here for? I don't hang around watertanks," she said dismally, knocking a stack of cups to the ground. Raz scooped them up for her, but didn't hand them over. He just stood there, looking stupid, while she banged around for things.

He had not talked to her boyfriend yet.

His day turned sour the instant he saw the fellow Psychonaut's name on any list—check-in, mailing list, anything. His name was Marc Dosset, and Raz didn't have a clue what he was like. He preferred to keep it that way, because the idea of having anything for the gaunt fanboy-gone-agent but tense, instinctual dislike was unthinkable. He wanted their relationship to be distant, and entirely biased to his personal needs. Not that Raz could actually be disposed to liking the man—a man indeed he was, being two years older than Lili. Their terms at Whispering Rock had coincided for three years before Marc was cycled out, but they had known nothing of each other.

Still, he was obviously more exciting than Razputin. Lili fulfilled her list of drink-mixes (it must have been for a conference, as her arms were nearly full) and stepped down off the stubby ladder. Razputin should have let her go back to her tasks, as she had no more reason to talk to him than to set fire to the portraits lining the hall. Still, he couldn't.

Maybe it was the sight of her with her hair down, but Razputin needed to keep her there for a moment longer. Somehow.

"Never knew you liked Sasha so much," Razputin blurted.

Lili turned, more sharply than necessary. Her hair shone with the movement, but her sepia-rimmed eyes narrowed in confusion. Still she looked impish, looked like the girl who had told him to shut up and kiss her.

Years though it had been, he still wanted to hear that-- with an added curse-word or two for emphasis. _Shut the hell up and kiss me, Razputin_. It still sounded like little Lili saying it, though, so he usually shut the voice down before it finished. They'd been separated for years, but since that awful incident he hadn't heard a word from Lili Zanotto that wasn't tinged with unwillingness.

He couldn't hold her eyes. It seemed like years before she responded.

"What?"

He chuckled dryly, wanting to shrink away from that acerbic syllable.

"He looks just like him," he said awkwardly, then stumbling for more—regretting, excusing, and trying somehow to make the curse-word an actual name. Marc. Marc. Her face darkened in warning of being too vague—of keeping her near him too long. Dislike was tangible as it rumbled toward him, tank-like.

Raz swallowed.

"Y'know. Marc."

Her eyes lit and the air temperature popped up three degrees, starting an instinctive sweat under his collar.

"Marc is a valuable part of our team," she said coldly. Without waiting, she dug her claws in: "If you're so shallow—"

"I was just saying—his coat looks like—" he stammered spinelessly, starting towards her. He ended up knocking into the stupid water tank, and she would hear no more of it. Turning with her armful of cups, she thrust the door open with an orange flare and left.

He watched her as she stalked through the hallway, cutting right into Marc as the other Psychonaut left an officer's room. They bumped, several packets of drink-mix fell to the floor, and while Marc lifted his hands in surprise, Lili took an immediate left and dodged around him. He caught her by the arm, she shook her head, and they both mouthed things for a moment before Marc tugged her into a brief hug.

Raz timed it.

Somehow, though he had never hugged her in memory, he knew exactly when to let go. Marc held on a second too late. She squirmed. The wrongness soaked through the glass between them and entered _him_, and he knew it: so how could _they_ be right when he had the exact same internal clock? It was as though someone had pulled a release valve in his chest. Like regretful, cold breath, the feeling weighed his heart down with wet greys.

But he could always be wrong—and relationships weren't built on flimsy, magical things like imagination. He had never hugged Lili, regardless of how his mind saw it. Anyways, they'd only been ten.

Even now, they were only sixteen.

Out in the hallway, Lili smiled to put Marc at ease; they picked up the packets together, then walked off and parted at the next hallway. He touched her hair. Back in the room, Raz slumped where he stood, dropping his cup onto the floor.

"Dangit."

And he still had paperwork to do.


	4. Back

A/N: I DO like this chapter! It's basically a huge… set-up deedlidooger. EEZ' FUN.

Plus angst. We like light angst, don't we? Yes.

(And I know the elite 'naut hasn't gone into a coma yet! THAT'S COMING. XD Does anybody else's little fic-descriptions end up being either way too broad, or with a completely wrong emphasis? Yeah. Me too. And chapter titles? HAHA, I play poke-the-paper with the dictionary! EEZGEWD.)

Hmmmm. My equations for this one? Lili equals deepish, Raz equals troubled, Milla equals AWWW-teenage-infatuation, and Sasha equals cool-flat-ugh dispassion. And my homepage has a wee character sheet for younger Sasha and Milla, if anyone wants'a look!

I also sincerely hope everyone doesn't mind my habit of naming un-named characters? They aren't real to me until they have names, thus I concoct ones, and stick in names for small characters whenever I can. S'how I rawll. (And how I lawl:D)

Anyways, enjoy!

-.-.-.-.-

Back

-.-.-.-.-

Nobody could say circus life was a breeze.

Rather, they were the pungent wind that rolled in and out of places, leaving disorder (and often corruption) wherever they went. But the Aquatos had been living life in the circus for generations; they were gypsy-like in nature, and had created their own world to cart around with them on the tangle of their tarps. As all Aquatos learned, life itself was a show, and the balancing act inside the jostled marble-bag of their family was by far the most unique.

There was school. Reading, writing and arithmetic. No one could say an Aquato was ignorant of basic things. Most of the children skipped Calculus and Trigonometry in favor of upper-body weight training, however: education became optional at eighteen. The tightrope tricks of twin Aquatos Timon and Ivan were infamous back in 48', but it was a known fact that neither could so much as spell the word 'ticket'.

No one really cared about that when, seventy feet in the smoky air, one of the brothers' hands slipped in the middle of a swing; the other caught it, locked arms, and sent them both into a perfectly planned, horizontal tornado of legs around the rope, until, by some trick of the imagination, they righted themselves through an origami of body-parts and faced the crowd with Ivan perched on Timon's shoulders. They bowed, belting a perfect C harmony.

It is therefore easily understood that the spelling, definition or connotation of the word 'ticket' was the last thing on the audience's mind at that moment—except perhaps when ordering a repeat performance. Such was life, even in '48.

Aquatos were also weaned into double tasking. They began by standing on a tightrope (a healthy three inches above the ground) and reciting their ABCs. Things simply escalated from there. ABCs crept into Robert Frost's 'A Road Not Taken', and three inches mushroomed to fifty feet. Instead of granting age-determined privileges such as dating, or driving the car—no, the Aquatos had 'tumbler' ten, 'tightrope' twelve, and 'trapeze' teens.

There was no one to date. There was no car to drive. The candy-striped prison bars held the family soundly within their world and gave the prisoners nothing but fleeting, screaming audiences—apparitions glimpsed out of the corners of their eyes, never the same color twice. Some of the other actors—mostly the glitzy horse-riders and tutu-girls—invited people from that maw of voyeurism to 'stay' with them for a night or two before the menagerie moved on. Just to have some human contact. It was lonely, for those that didn't have families.

Razputin's father had to protect his family, and doing that meant keeping an eye on all of the other performers.

The Aquatos were a lead act, and things were not smooth when the pecking order was disrupted. New faces meant new, if often unintended, threats. Such was the case with a certain landmark event: a handful of years ago, a rookie animal act entered the circus. One afternoon, after the burly grunts had moved a theatrically deep-dish water trough in for the horses, they set it down under a ladder. Mimsi, Raz's oldest sister, fell into the water in the middle of practicing an act and nearly drowned. Or so they say.

The reality is, she was yanked into it, kicking and screaming.

It was not her fault in the least. The greasy, protein-laced water had made the first move, spouting up and engulfing her knees. As his sister screamed, Raz would always remember his father sprinting over the sanded ground and overturning the trough with a strength belied by his skinny acrobat limbs. Dimitri scooped her body from the thunderous splash, and then, bellowing, pried the dissipating hands from over Mimsi's mouth. The hands reached for him next, cementing the father and daughter together in a watery strangle hold, but they held onto _her_ until the last of it was lost to the ground. Mimsi was carried, sobbing brokenly, into the family's where she would remain for a week: a ghastly reminder of the danger inherent in their surname.

That was before the rest of the troupe knew that the Aquatos were 'funny' about more than three feet of standing water. After the event nearly came to fists between his father and the owner of the horses, there were simply no more water acts. Ever.

Because Razputin knew more now—the gypsies, the psychics, his father—he could see things more clearly. Mostly, he could see how his father's concealed psychic abilities had worked into his life in small, breathless ways.

Now, looking back, he could easily lump a pocketful of supernatural moments together in one comprehensive line. Those times when he was scaling the levels, dropped, and ropes sinuously adjusted themselves to save him from sixty feet and two broken legs, rather than bouncing him into open air; those times felt reality shift so that he could span those two inches to reach the trapeze he had mistimed by a quarter of a second. Oh, the cold sweat when his fingers closed on it. Thank heavens, thank heavens, he would live for today.

Dimitri Aquato disliked psychics for professional reasons and had worried for Raz, but still nudged reality aside when the situation called for it. He was Razputin's father; it was practically his job. Come to think of it, in training his youngest sister, who was excruciatingly clumsy in her youth, he must have had his hands full trying to save her from her complete lack of timing and balance. She was an accomplished acrobat now, but…well, there must have been some close calls.

Razputin rarely thought about the circus anymore.

-.-.-.-.-

_There was but one light. _

_It was on him. It was in him._

_A smooth lemon-yellow circle, a bubble of warm broth encasing him and his sickly stretched-taffy shadow. _

_The wooden stands were empty. Like a line of empty graves connected head to head. Barren canals, meant to be teeming with transitory, sloshing human refuse. He didn't care._

_The feeling, the feeling! Who said he had never enjoyed this? The knowledge that he was being held from the talent within his head never stopped the pure, ritual joy of using his body._

"_Now, Razputin."_

_He was hanging by his hands. He was hanging by a rope, the innards, a swinging sinew of a monstrous circus creature with flaming hoops for eyes. The narrow weight of his body pulled the coarse brown band into a joint. An elbow, cocked. His head swam. His father's strong face loomed in his mind._

"_Up," his father commanded. Just that word gave him the ability._

_The pure physics of it filled him in heaving himself up on the rope and feeling it go taut with his locked elbows; that easily controlled yet punctilious sway manufactured by his joints. He was an organic machine, taught and taut and instinctual and precise. The circus tent was the sky, and he jumped into the shameless reds and wet, varnished whites like he hoped to be swallowed by the throat-like spiral._

_He was._

_Then the tent pulsed and hiked its skirts off the ground, engorged like a red stomach, and spat him hundreds of feet to the ground where a theatrically deep-dish water trough was waiting._

Razputin opened his eyes just in time to hear a machine-gun string of pops, then a crash. Propping his boneless body up against the sweaty darkness, eyes wide, he saw his bedside lamp in pieces on the ground. The sight refused to make sense. Once it did, cramming his pillow over his head and curling into a knobby teenage ball, he asphyxiated himself to calming, grey sleep.

-.-.-.-

He didn't like the cold that much, but now it seemed to sift up his nose to coat his brain with ice. He liked that. He'd been liking it for over twenty minutes. A door opened behind him, and the breeze preceded the porch's new arrival: strangely ultra-violet cigarette smoke and the sanitary, green-colored smell of Agent Nein's cologne. Nein let the iron door close behind him before he spoke.

"Razputin?

In that single name came the demand to know why he was absent from his desk and all his paperwork, and his curiousness of being out in the cold with a backpack. The three syllables were packed with dense, sinewy question marks. Raz didn't care.

The events of last night had worried him. It was better than wetting the bed, but some psychics still got sleep-TKing. Dreams were manufactured from a bored psyche, or unconscious thoughts allowed to run with themselves: therefore, it was quite easy for some energy to get 'sticky' (psychoactive), lump together and lash out. It was like walking into a room full of pepper and hoping not to sneeze. Sometimes it just happened.

More often than not, it happened when your mind was trying to give you a hint.

But his coloring had been off. Milla gave him strange looks in the hallways, and had even palmed a health concoction onto his cubicle desk after an awkward conversation (even after thanking Milla, who cooked with some mighty strange things, Raz opted out of drinking the malt-like purple liquid). Sasha, of course, didn't seem to see or care. Not that Raz ever truly attempted to shock him into caring. Even at that moment, when demanding answers from a rogue and amateur Psychonaut, Sasha's mind was elsewhere as he plucked out another death stick and tucked the pack away.

"I think I'm gonna take off," Raz said listlessly. He almost sounded bored with the option, when really it was a heavy decision to make.

That seemed to capture Sasha's attention. Drawing even with the boy, he took his unlit cigarette from his lips and looked at Raz, hard.

"Razputin," he began darkly. "You simply cannot leave without telling anyone."

"That's what you're here for," Raz half-smiled, turning to look up at his idol. He still had his cheeky charm, and Sasha was not immune, despite his forbidding rectangular glasses.

Sasha remained silent, as though realizing himself as a witness to the young man's anti-protocol machinations. He breathed steadily, watching his breath plume into the air like icing.

"Where do you intend to go?" He asked finally, without any trace of commitment.

"Home," Raz mumbled. Which meant, anywhere. Anywhere with stage lights, his father, and that dizzy swirl of red and white.

"You don't intend to stay," Sasha said with certainty-- almost informing him of it. Raz shook his head and sat up straight, readjusting his ratty, badge-littered backpack.

"Nope. Not for long."

He smiled uncertainly. This move was not permanent, of that much he was certain. He scuffed at the concrete as he stood up, surveying the dewy morning, and turned around.

"I'll be back, Sasha," he started again, then smiled in his own lopsided way. "Tell Milla not to miss me so much, okay? I know I'm the only cool guy around here, but… she'll have to make do." A pause. "By the way, if you're thirsty, I think she left you something. It's on my desk, so have at it."

Sasha said nothing. As the young Psychonaut trotted off into the wall of trees, he simply lit his cigarette and took a reserved pull, watching Razputin Aquato, the 'anti-kidnapping specialist', disappear.

-.-.-.-

It had every semblance of an official briefing. All of them trembled with intensity as Sergeant Maness took the stage. He cleared his throat.

"Vodello, Fujioka, Harattan, Nein, Andrews and Griffin, classes 5b through 13b. We at Psychonauts Headquarters are pleased to announce that you have been handpicked out of the entirety of the advanced undergraduates in our CWR program in order to complete a vital, intelligence-oriented task for the Head. You will all be assigned a partner and an individual task, along with a basic communicator in case there is an emergency. Veteran Psychonauts will be on call twenty-four-seven from the moment you are deployed, which will be at 0600 hours tomorrow. Your destination is lower Slovenia, Postojna, and heavy field gear will be supplied by your attending officer."

With his perhaps-purposeful mispronunciation of the city, Maness broke his starched fourth wall and spoke to the kids directly, becoming more real by the moment.

"So there's your lot. Like I said, we've got talkers for y'all and about a fifteen minute estimated arrival time, so don't panic. But, hey, please don't ring us up if you get a headache, people, we're talking real code reds here. So buck up unless somebody's bleeding out the—"

A light reconnaissance mission, six students, no direct adult supervision. Their lifelines were encapsulated in advanced walkie-talkies. As though the tender apprentices were short on ghastly things to comprehend, in order that they not be dangerous to the 'cause', the official could not inform the students (who ranged from chary to delighted to suicidal) of the purpose of their task. Student shields were student shields, and crucial information therein might as well have been served on a silver platter to any invading force. Were they captured (oh, the thoughts sent icy needles into the warm crooks of their bodies!) they would know nothing. Hopefully, their ignorance would protect them.

The HQ officials would do it themselves, of course, but this was how real Psychonauts were trained.

Milla had gasped to find her name first; she had corked the gasp to find Sasha Nein's name at all. Not that he wasn't one of the most talented students at CWR, but there was always a chance they wouldn't have included him. Some of the instructors seemed unsure about him in his younger years, and despite his brilliance making itself known in many ways, they were not entirely appeased.

Situated in a stringent lineup of undergraduates, Milla watched him long and hard after his name was spoken, as though he might look over to her—share a glance, an unspoken opinion. Minutes passed. Indeed, if she waited for such a thing, Sasha was blissfully unaware of her expectations: he, with his off-color mix of vigilance and dispassion, remained facing forward, absorbing all the sharply uniformed official had to say to their ragtag group of six.

When it came to assigning partners, Milla waited with a smile. She knew all five students well enough, and would have been happy with any of them. She had no preference, or so she told herself, but she nearly fainted when _he_ was assigned to her. _Her_.

Pale, divine, subtly saturnine Sasha Nein (she had a knack for phrases you could snap your fingers to), nineteen years old and _so_ very adult, was her partner. She herself was a tenderesque fifteen (young but not _completely_ un-datable to, say, nineteen year olds) and thus felt humbled and gleeful to have such a powerhouse on her side. Success, she thought, was sublimely certain, and that was all there was to it.

It wasn't as though she had grown up with Sasha year after year and, despite having never gleaned a single casual word from him, nursed a massive, inexplicable attraction to the older boy. Not at all. No.

Well. Life is complicated.

After all, she thought, after so many years (six, really) it had become a mundane little crush. Flat, but in a comforting, habitual way. Oh, yes, she liked Sasha Nein—but she also dated when she had the chance, choosing the boys who made her feel a sweet spike of anxiousness, rather than the dull buzz Mr. Sasha Nein-to-say provided. Sometimes, she didn't know what was wrong with her, chasing after one dull boy for so long when he _obviously_ couldn't and didn't appreciate her.

At that moment, with the briefing dispersing noisily and the very same young man striding toward her, she didn't quite care.

"Sasha," she exclaimed needlessly, not failing to check herself as she trotted to meet him. Then he stopped, and so did she. "So. We're together!"

Smile pervading her face like a tart, pink taste, she tried to scrub out the inevitable exclamation mark, but failed. Milla, waiting for an answer, radiated sunshine from her rouged cheeks; Sasha simply looked at her, in his impeccably neutral way--not _down_ his Germanic nose, but rather from the side of it.

"Make sure you're properly equipped in the morning," he informed her, the rare sound of his thick voice causing her to excuse his brusqueness. A pause lingered as her lively green eyes held his dull brown ones, the former infused with admiration. Then he pointed to the side of her face. "And please don't."

She realized he was pointing to her gaudy earrings.

Milla's face burned, hands immediately rushing to whip the offending jewelry off. Oh, she hated those hoops for the moment she tore them from her ears and wrestled them into her pockets. Just touching them made her nauseous, as they embodied everything garish and loud and _awful_ about her that Sasha simply _hated_, she would _burn them_—but as soon as she looked up, blushing for approval, Sasha was already gone.

She left the briefing room feeling a little charred on the inside.

-.-.-.-.-

Lulled by the sound of low white noise, two women reclined in a comfortable, pointedly maroon room, each attending to their own thoughts in the near-silence. One, the eldest, transferred her compact observations onto a clipboard, and had been doing so for several minutes. Lili had teased her (rare) right pigtail into a formidable tuft in the meantime. As she secured a grip on the other, Ms. Mizuno looked up and gave the girl a smile.

"Anything else you want to talk about?"

Therapists were a special breed at Psychonauts HQ. Almost all of the 'Nauts had not a few demons in their past, and before the more hideous ones could be revamped by the Rethink Productions Lab, they had to be located and exorcised. Therapists specialized in this, particularly for those in amnesia-related situations. Ms. Mizuno, a small Asian ex-Psychonaut with cat glasses, had become Lili's guardian therapist on her mother's orders. While the smallest Zanotto was in a critical condition for months after Truman's death, and the only way to reach her at that time was by (meta-)psychically invading her sub-consciousness, most of the dirty work had been done. Now the process of exploration was left to simple question and answer.

Lili let her hair fall free, shaking her head in answer to Ms. Mizuno.

"Nope."

Ms. Mizuno hummed after a moment, bouncing her pencil several times on the side of her desk and attracting Lili's attention.

"How about… may I ask?" The urbane woman inclined her head, regarding her patient respectfully; Lili made a neutral sound, shrugging.

"Razputin Aquato."

Ms. Mizuno smiled slightly as her patient immediately stiffened and turned her heart chin to the side. The snort came soon after. She had recorded this reaction too many times to find it noteworthy anymore, and instead smoothed her dress as she sat back.

"Lili," she began softly. "Why are you upset with him? He's just a boy."

"I don't know. I'm not, really," she groaned in exasperation, but finished sullenly, "I just don't know."

"Why?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Try to think about it."

She did as she was told: as she had done for nights and nights. Razputin remained a mystery to her—a dense, idiotic mystery that made her retreat to glares and quick words. He was _infuriating_. Just seeing him made her nauseous down to her _fingertips_, and she couldn't explain it. She couldn't say she disliked him, because it was the wrong word. Too simple, too flat. Yet she did not hate him. And further still, there was something else. She crouched forward, cupping her face in her hands.

"I just don't know," she muttered, the recycled phrase enervating her piece by piece.

"Is he rude to you?" Her therapist asked lightly.

"No," she half-guffawed, mocking his simpering attitude for a moment with clutched hands and a pouty lip. Ms. Mizuno watched, smiling politely. After sitting back, Lili seemed to catch another hot train of thought, and cut in before her therapist could rattle off another question.

"Actually, he was a jerk the other day. But, really, that's not the point: the point is, I don't really even _know_ him," she explained brusquely. Her scowl grew as she gestured, irritated at the complications. "I mean, yeah, I know him. But we were ten. So not really. So why should it matter? Like you said, he's just a boy. I've met dumber ones."

And somehow, they didn't merit half her hellion scorn, she thought.

"Just wondering," Ms. Mizuno said, vaguely, working away with her pencil once more. When the dry scribbling halted, Lili looked up to find the elder ex-Psychonaut regarding her with sudden reluctance.

"What?"

"I'm sorry to make you do this again, Lili," she apologized, paisley geisha-brows tilting sorrowfully. "But I have to keep asking."

Lili kept her peace, sepia-rimmed eyes narrowing. Inside, she grasped for what her therapist could mean. Ms. Mizuno flipped to a new page and took a breath. When she spoke again, it was louder and forced.

"Why did your father die?"

Lili's eyes fell to the floor, breath catching in her throat. The new, crass question ricocheted between her temples, somehow filling her heart with hot liquid. She coughed.

"He…" she started, then shook her head. "I don't know, he—he just died."

Her voice shrank.

"It's what happens, sometimes."

"How did he die?" The voice seemed to come from the side, harpooning her.

Lili Zanotto did not move, focusing instead on the even hush of her own breath.

"Heart attack? Stroke?" Ms. Mizuno supplied at her silence, too readily. Lili looked up, then, shocked by the hardening face of her trusted therapist. But then there was the question—the sharp question, added to the other nails against her mind. They pressed in, liquefying her, drawing her lips underneath her teeth for _pressurepressurecuttingpressure_.

"I—I just—"

She was startled. How did he die? No, she was _fearful_, diving past the occurrence to the end result. Strong-headed. Needy. She had thought about this too many times, yet not at all. Haunting. Something, something, _she needed something to say_.

"No, yes—one of those, I said I don't know!" She snapped, then thrust her hands into the couch, shouting outwards at the room, at Ms. Mizuno. "It doesn't matter because he's gone now! He's dead, I'm not stupid!"

She was an adoring, dedicated daughter destroyed by the death of her father, though she accepted the fact he was dead. But that wasn't the point. Ms. Mizuno opened her mouth.

"I'm not—"

Lili barreled onwards, voice spiking into something raw and wild, filling the room with the yellow mustard gas of psychic hysteria. Ms. Mizuno stiffened.

"Are you asking me if he's dead?! Because he is! He's dead, how many times do I have to say it? H-how many—"

She stopped, rage flagging into a terrible, wide-eyed blankness. Her spine wavered; Lili fell into her own arms, shivering. The mist dropped from the air.

"How many times are you going to make me say it?" She whispered, filling her own ears. "Oh, god, Daddy. Dad. How many times are you going to make me _say_ it?"

Ms. Mizuno, shaking her head, blinked back the dampness in her eyes as she walked to Lili and took her head between her small hands, gently rubbing her temples. The teenager grasped for her, sobs budding in her tight throat as hiccups. Slowly, as Ms. Mizuno touched her, and invisibly fed her swollen psyche strings of something soft, Lili ceased whispering, gave a single, raspy sob, then lay quiet on the maroon couch. The white noise buzzed on, a haunting soundtrack for a well-known scene.

Ms. Mizuno never had to apologize for what she did. Lili never remembered any of it.

The therapist separated herself from the girl, and moved to store her notes in a special file cabinet. There was but one name stamped across the front: that of the Psychonaut on the couch. She would be up and around in half an hour. Ms. Mizuno left her patient sleeping in her office.

Just like each time before.


	5. Home

A/N: HEY. SO. Long time no see :3

And so Sasha and Milla have a little more (traumatizing, yet sadly undetailed) substance added to their past together, and Razputin finds that all is not exactly normal at home. I apologize for introducing yet more Ocs (Raz has an UNLIMITED AMOUNT OF SIBLINGS, HO-GAWD: he has the pot of Sibling Plenty!), but Psychonauts is extremely limited in their main-character department D: AND IT'S GAWN' GIT WURSE.

I still love this story idea, and I ADORE Psychonauts, but I tell ya, best insurance you can offer for this thing's survival? Reviews. I love em. So does everyone else. SO HIT THAT BUTTON AND SAY SOMETHING NICE. And preferably true. (Half-truths are accepted at ten-percent charge.)

Soooooo enjoy. :winknudge:

-.-.-.-.-.-

Home

-.-.-.-.-.-

He had missed a lot.

Mimsi had gotten married; the Muscle Maestro Byron, her husband and lifelong friend, nearly broke Razputin's poor, bony fingers in a heavyweight handshake. Tyler, not yet three when he'd snuck into Whispering Rock, had graduated to tumbling. Sisters had bloomed; brothers had shot up like trees. The Aquatos had thrived on without him: a fact he found, sadly, a little disconcerting.

Still, they welcomed him back into his artistically mismatched family—demanded to hear stories of his grand adventures, preferably the ones they'd been acquainted with through the radio—and did not ask about his sudden decision to return. They took it lightly, as though Razputin were a snowstorm in summer: an altogether unexpected surprise, but too welcome to be contested.

They loved him, and that knowledge found a hungry home in him. Within days they had cleared a place for him in almost all of their evolving acts.

It was an undeserved place, he often thought, as it was unimaginable that he should head the Chimera Strike his first week back, but his bandy body was natural for it. His brothers had grown too heavy, and the symmetry was broken if one of his sisters was pulled from the sides. He was the perfect and only choice.

He could not deny the instant surge of belonging when the hot lights found him and the crowd began to cheer.

So there he was, back in the circus. He picked up a childhood of training and tested it in the ring like a rust-caked bicycle, swerving and squeaking madly but never falling. His body didn't fail him as he led acts and walked ropes, but now it was more complicated than sheer physical prowess: these days he spent half his energy trying to ignore the mental refuse chucked at him by the overwhelming crowd. Psychic training had advanced his reception further than he could shield it from thoughts en masse, and Razputin wasn't prepared for the deluge of sticky chatter when the first spotlight swung upwards. Some thoughts were encouraging, most distracting and some… well, bad apples had found a way to apply sadism to circus acts. Of course.

"_He's gonna fall! The bastard's gonna fall!"_

A step. A step. A wavering step, just to cater to their sickness.

"_Go! Go, go, go! Splat!"_

"_Circuses are so lame."_

His father chastised him afterwards, for being provoked into doing his finale too early.

_  
"Goddamnit, Janet, if that brat whines for candy one more time—"_

Circus life was entirely without compare. But then again, why was it so easy to go back to it?

Razputin lay back against a pile of knotty replacement rigging, looking up at the clear skies of… wherever they were. Between the burn of his muscles and the directional bewilderment acrobatics offered, he didn't give a damn where in the world they were. After all, up in the trapezes, figuring out which way was up was a momentary pleasure—the next moment, you were upside-down again and nothing of the sort mattered. Coping with permanent disorientation was a pain, but it was also a survival instinct, if you valued your spine.

"Razputin, Razputin!"

Razputin looked over, rising somewhat from the rigging. After a moment the nearby tent flaps waggled out of the way, revealing flashes of Sariel, the infamously clumsy younger sister. She chased him down in the back of the tent, be-jeweled and be-belled training harness still waggling from her dainty, candy-striped frame.

"Razputin!" She chirped, bouncing and smacking her foot on a thick harness hook. She buckled, hopping for a moment with a puckered face.

"Yes?" Raz drawled expectantly, arching an eyebrow as, after the pain subsided, she giggled and twisted out of the ropes somewhat shyly. After she worked herself free, she started again:

"Hi!"

"Hi," Raz returned bemusedly, struck by the awkwardness between them. "What is it?"

Sariel, shocked at his question, rooted around with her foot in the fine grey grit of This Week's Home. As though she'd shed it alongside her rainbow harness, it took her a minute to rediscover her point.

"Um. I just wanted to say thank you," she said bashfully. Such was the effect of six years apart with only rare visits: affection without familiarity. All the girls were shy around him, all the boys somewhat daunted. He smiled widely and sat up for her, admiring how much she'd grown. Her reddish hair was curled into devil-may-do pigtails, high on her head.

"What do you mean, Sara?"

Her eyes went wide. All of his questions had the same effect: instead of provoking answers, they tightened some sort of mental noose. But now Sariel looked as though she were storing a secret inside her round cheeks, and, at his anticipation, trumpeted it.

"For giving me the courage to come out to Dad!"

Razputin became nothing but a pair of eyeballs, locked on his sister.

What? No.

Wait.

The words didn't connect, they were in a different language. The phrase was too canned. But no, it didn't translate any other way, because he had been away for so _long_. She was his _sister_ first of all—he couldn't imagine how a feminine little punk like her could be ga—did the entire family already _know_--but what in the _world_ had he helped her with again?

Razputin looked up, left, then right for good measure, watched the pebbles on the ground rattle in the tremors of an oncoming train, then looked back at Sariel's cherubic face. Joy perfectly preserved.

"What?" The Psychonaut squeaked, enveloped in intense emasculation.

"I knew you wouldn't believe me!" She crowed, oblivious. Then she grabbed him by the hand, yanked his hundred-and-five pound frame up onto his size eleven feet, and led him over to a collection of traffic cones, stacked for safekeeping.

"Watch!"

The traffic cones' involvement just failed to add up for Raz, but he watched them dutifully for his sister's sake while a dull disbelief ate at his insides. Sariel said nothing. They simply stared together, standing in the hot summer air. The reedy gurgle of an accordion sifted from the tent. Patrucchio.

Razputin's head was already packed to the ears with smoky, dizzy thoughts, but after a minute… yes, of all things, he felt a familiar energy gathering at the sides of his vision. He moved to suppress it, thinking it to be a sticky thought, but it would not be subdued—because it was not his to subdue.

He did not see Sariel's face contract beside him. He continued testing the presence.

The energy was raw and weak, but close to effective. An itch, barely. He almost felt, stunned into silence, the yellow arrow materialize, rattling the traffic cones with a kitten's gusto—before the entire ball of energy backfired with the speed of a truck and blasted itself into something else.

The topmost traffic cone caught fire with a meaty pop.

Sariel screamed shrilly, and the next smoldering fifteen minutes were spent desperately dodging his sister and hosing the blaze down around the melted lump of plastic. The psychic fire proved incredibly vivacious and would not submit to a single hose, so Razputin sent Sariel running for another and they soon vanquished it together, screaming all the way.

"Oh my _god_, oh my god! _Oh_ my _god_!"

"Sara! Aim!"

"_Oh my god!_"

After the orange blobs stopped hissing, Raz listlessly tossed the limp hose down and, coughing in the churned up dust, looked for his sister. She lurked out of view, coiling her extinguisher down into a meek pile.

"So. Yeah," Sariel murmured. She kicked up yet more dust, as though wanting to cover the hose as evidence. At first, the young Psychonaut was entirely _done_ with what had just occurred, screaming hysteric aftermath and all. There had been a fire, and now there wasn't: the second was infinitely preferable to the first, and he was damn tired from making the arduous transition.

Then, suddenly, like a citrus line through his veins, Razputin's energy invaded him again and opened him to the experience. The obvious, ecstatic, unbelievable experience.

His sister had just PK'd a pile of traffic cones.

"You're a--! Holy cow!" He started hoarsely, slapping his forehead. It made sense, so much sense, and she nodded so fast he was surprised her head didn't jack up off her shoulders. Swallowing against his dry throat, his slightly red hands, he had to say it in full.

"Sariel!" He exclaimed, taking hold of her bird-bone shoulders. "You're a psychic!"

She performed a little half-jump, squirming, and emitted a shrill peep. Raz was brought to laughter again, and fell to his butt. "This is amazing! You actually set fire to the—"

Sara blushed mightily, and though it was the wrong thing to say, his tone made up for it. Razputin, the phantom older brother who appeared in the news and returned with medals and food and trinkets, was _proud_.

"And—wait, you've been keeping this a secret the entire time?" He asked blankly, bottlenecked by his ignorance of the situation. Sariel shrugged, still red.

"Just a year."

Raz's barely-handsome face knotted up, and he looked at her uncertainly.

"A year," he said slowly.

As though it was a disappointment to him, she amended it anxiously.

"Well, I dunno-- maybe two. You lose track of time, don't you?"

Razputin nodded absently. Not quite agreeing. He had known of his psychic powers since… he had felt different for as long as he could remember. Five years old, give or take. Sariel was a fresh thirteen. How could that be?

He didn't claim to know everything about psychics, but that was definitely different. What was his sister made of?

Silence dawdled between them in the dusty back-tent scene as the Psychonaut chewed that over. When Raz realized Sara was braiding her hair (which would have been a simple, endearing habit, had her knuckles not been as white as shellfish), he roused himself.

"So… are you gonna do anything with it?" He asked her softly. She let her braid go—it swirled free—and shook her head. His face fell.

"But, Sariel—"

"I know where I'm supposed to be," she began, stopping him with a smile. "You were different. But Papa is okay with it now, and that's what matters. We're okay, thanks to you."

Before he could respond to this intense bit of maturity, Sariel sprang to her feet and, plucking the jingling, LSD rainbow harness up in one hand, fell forward to give him a sloppy hug. Bells pattered on his back, musical and tactual.

"Thank you, Razzle Dazzle," she said, pressing a shy kiss to his temple. Already bright red from the long-extinct nickname, Raz choked out a positive sound, but his sister loped off before he could return the motion. His arms remained limp at his sides, unusually heavy.

Raz watched her disappear into the tent, listened to her until the jingles stopped, then looked at her trophy of plastic. Regardless of his father being _less_ concerned about his children becoming a rampaging bunch of psychoactive hellions, props were still props, and fire plus props was never a good combination. Raz was prepared to do any explaining necessary in order to have a new shipment of cones moved in without question.

Running his hands through his hair, he took a steadying gulp from the tinny-tasting hose water and headed inside.

He really had missed a lot.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The mission had gone horribly wrong.

She had followed him step for step after they were dropped at the entrance to the cavern, pleased and tamed by his mute authority and the way he reached for her wrist (as unfeeling as the motion was) when the dark became more intense. They spoke back and forth into one another's minds, attempting ultimate stealth. Water dripped around them, echoing across the limestone.

She had suggested earlier, in a mere squeak, that they levitate the whole way to avoid floor-traps. Sasha had only snorted, and sent a resentful lump of energy her way. Meaning, just because it's your penchant doesn't mean its mine, and he hardly knew an opponent thick enough to plant floor traps where psychics were expected, and they'd best concentrate their energies on something _useful_, thanks. Milla shut up, feeling both hot and cold at the rejection and too sorely emotional for the stalwart concentration that _real_ reconnaissance missions required. They continued on, stumbling every so often.

It hardly seemed real, being alone in the dark with him. Relying on each other for protection.

Perhaps it would have saved him, if he had taken her advice. But then again, the threat never made itself known: Milla had no idea if they had tripped a switch, or set off a laser sensor. All they saw and felt, after a series of clicks and one long squeal, was acidic white light. Within moments, the entire cavern was ablaze, and Milla screamed shrilly, certain of her death.

To this day, she never found out what the explosion was. Probably a trial experiment, although she couldn't name the proposed purpose of it. All she knew was what the trap did to Sasha: and it happened to him while he was protecting her.

Divine Sasha Nein shoved her aside and took the brunt of the explosion.

Perhaps he fell in front of her, in reality: maybe it was an accident, and Milla's seared, infatuated teenage mind superimposed a heroic image on top of a scarring coincidence or loss of balance. Regardless, Sasha's cries joined hers as the white light slapped him backwards, and the air, once the sulfur had settled, reeked of burnt synthetic fibers. Their clothes were in tatters. The darkness was heavily knit with ash, utterly solid around them. Their bodies had collided somehow, but ricocheted like pinballs, flung painfully into different crevices. It was a moment, in the impenetrable silence, before they found one another.

Milla dredged herself from a corner, throat red and aching from dry heaving; shock filled every neuron of her body. Her ears rang, short-circuiting her mind with pure sonic domination. Wiping her dust-caked mouth, she crawled on her knees to where a pile of something soft lay, broken-looking and pale.

"S-sasha?" She whispered. Her voice echoed in the blackened cavern. "Are you…"

Then she was certain it was him, because of his long fingers hooked against the stone. She reached out and touched his shoulder, and he began to tremble. He was alive, thank god, but there were no words. In a few painful, lurching, gasp-riddled minutes, she had him sitting up. Her gloved hands supported his caved chest. Panic coiled in her, serpentine and cold, as his head refused to rise. The air had begun to clear: the explosion had afforded them a messy skylight, and the resulting phosphorous glow draped their shoulders and faces in a thick blue.

Her heart thumped on a million miles a minute. He did not look up at her. She shook him, gently as she could.

"Sasha?" She whispered, then screamed: Sasha yanked them together, a primal stutter spewing from his open mouth. It was no move to draw her closer. It was a violent spasm of his limbs; an instinctive refusal. His tremors doubled, and she heard his teeth clack together. Then his hands dropped to her wrists and, mindlessly, squeezed them so hard she heard her bones creak.

"Sasha, stop!" She pleaded, bucking away and jolting her aching body; she cried out from the pain, then. Though he would not let go, the sound of her voice and outburst injured him. He gasped, stilling, and then, disconnected and abrupt, cried out in something like agony.

He crumpled against her, groaning. Tears burned at Milla's eyes, instant and horrified.

"What? What's wrong, Sasha?" Milla sobbed into his shoulder, hysteric, curled inside out by the nauseating panic he radiated. She almost shook him again, but he choked out a noise. As it escalated, words congealed from the hot, hopeless gurgle.

"I… c-can't see. I can't see."

Oh, the panic of losing a sense. The paralyzing fear; the frustration; the drive and need and want to scream.

"Wh-what? No," she said firmly into the half-darkness, despite the deadly waver in her voice and mind and body. "No. Let me—"

She held his face, lifting his chin; he obeyed, dirt-streaked lines of his features twitching piteously. Prepared for a sharp blow from a cold world he could no longer see. He opened his eyes, and Milla couldn't stop herself from gasping. Wet red blood filled his sclera, thin and gelatinous under the waxy membrane. A poisonous purple, in the poor light. Each of his eyes possessed an engorged brown iris, blind and blank.

"What has happened?" He rasped. His hand tightened on her wrist.

"N-…"

She couldn't bring herself to say it. Then, finally, she found the courage to lie.

"Nothing. Oh, nothing, Sasha: nothing is wrong."

She stood up, still holding him somehow with her shaking hands. Her ankle ached deeply where she had fallen on it, as though something serrated were grating against her heel. Ignoring the pain, she heaved her emaciated Psychonaut partner to his feet, coaxing a spark of levitation energy under him to pull off the job. She grit her teeth, burgeoning with cold fear of yet more traps and the still colder option of being lost in the caverns until somebody—not a good somebody—found them. She closed her eyes for a moment, forming a message.

_We have to get out of here._

He nodded blankly; she was encouraged that, at the least, he could still receive thoughts. She hoisted him up against her, and started limping along the slick rock. It was slow going: so slow that it couldn't possibly feed her dying adrenaline and stamina, or overcome her disorientation. She couldn't lead Sasha blindly (even though he wasn't blind, she told herself, just hurt) and save him from stumbling over things without exhausting herself prematurely, or leading them into more danger. Within minutes she had to stop, lungs raw from exertion while her partner hung limply from her arm. Then, an idea:

_Use Clairvoyance, Sasha. It will let you see, if just for now._

Sasha's breathing slowed, as if the idea had penetrated his thick wall of shock. He stayed silent, mistrust leaking out of him, but soon dredged up enough energy for it: sight entered his head, but it was flat and self-contained, like liquid sloshing in a vessel. Sasha grabbed at her, mind buzzing with the disorientation of clairvoyance. Soon they were properly intertwined, arms looped around each others necks as they stumbled towards… anyplace. They had to get out.

Milla's sight dropped down every other step, dialing an SOS to HQ, and they lasted another three hundred feet before Sasha lost consciousness. It happened at a pile of rocks, whereupon the older boy tripped, crashed, and dragged Milla down the craggy slope with him. Their screams stopped abruptly at the bottom.

An emergency attending found them lumped together in a crusty, boulder-rimmed crevice: Milla, bleeding from a generous gash in her shoulder, draped over the white, fever-shaken Sasha.

-.-.-.-.-

"One, two—three—"

His family had taken up voicing counts for him, but he could tell it was unnatural. He tried to slip between their counts, to move beyond them, arching and bending as he regained his atrophied sense of rhythm. Trapeze had always been his favorite, next to tightrope.

The clap and pop of strong, powdered wrists was still the same. The bleachers swerved dizzily under him, then—an inside lurch—he spun into the air, turning head over heels, then his dry hands slapped into his sisters and their fingers tightened with a creak like rope.

Leap—lurch.

Air.

Whirl—slap—swoop.

It was the heady five-count of a rollercoaster, high above the ground. He flew, until he hit the wooden platform and slammed into the pole splitting it. His foot was damp, and he nearly toppled off it—a yell and a TK bend of some rope was all that saved him. Sariel laughed suddenly from across the tent roof and performed a little cartwheel around her own pole, jingling obnoxiously. He shook his head bemusedly, suddenly recognizing an acute itch in his joints, and palmed a defeated signal to his brothers. Then he retreated down the ladder, allowing his chattering brothers and sisters to continue.

He watched until they picked it up again (once more feeling uncertain about the speed in which they absorbed his absence in the formation, as though he had never been there) then went for another drink of water by the tent entrance. He gulped it from the hose, bent over, then filled a handful and scrubbed it through his hair. It felt better than the muggy air, so he turned his sticky face into the warm stream, coating his head.

Wiping his eyes, he squinted into the overcast day outside the tent. His father, who had disappeared from their practice ten minutes earlier, stood outside, a matchstick man of striped stockings and a triangular torso. A few paces to the left stood a willowy, coated lady with pale hair, deep in conversation with Dimitri. She gestured demurely, explaining something—the languid moment she took to tie her hair up in a blue bandana spoke volumes of her ease, either with herself or her subject. His wiry father listened to her with his arms crossed, unmoving.

It didn't look like one of their contractors. They were stuck somewhere in the Midwest, and thus their business partners were doomed to have SI straw hats and overalls (and a questionable lack of teeth), but this lady was quite smartly dressed. Razputin even thought he spied heels underneath her long jacket, and at that his interest was piqued.

Sneakily, as he had learned to tease his father, he sent out a bulb of clairvoyant energy. It bobbed through the tent entrance like a harmless purple jellyfish, beelining for the two conversationalists. Usually, his father swatted the metaphysical intrusion aside and all continued, perhaps with a wry look or two… but this time, when the oily distortion nudged at his own psychic net, he whirled around and extinguished it with the force of a slap. The blow was so sharp that Razputin's joints gave a chorus of anxious pops.

He glared past it, and Razputin could only stare in mute, uncomprehending shock at the enraged look he received from his father's wrinkled face. The woman leaned in to look at him as well, outside the heat-like distortion of his father's ire, as some sort of curious, powder-soft spectator. She rearranged her grey glasses and smiled as Raz's father turned back to her with stiff joints and hackles raised. She opened her mouth, and Dimitri began shouting at her, his furious gestures slicing the air in front of her long-nosed face.

Raz had no idea what he'd just attempted to (playfully) cut in on.

He retreated to the tent, stomach churning, and waited for his father to stop abusing the visitor. It only took a few moments: the yelling ceased, the rare sound of a car engine dirtied the air (he had made sure she got in her car and drove off, Raz realized), and Dimitri soon stormed into their high-top, weathered face contorted in disgust.

Razputin, lingering like a bad taste on some nearby ropes, quickly hopped down from the tier when his father passed him. The aged acrobat's skinny limbs jerked this way and that as objects nearby rattled dubiously.

"Dad—" Raz began, but Dimitri dealt him a fatal, forestalling gesture.

"Go back to work, Rasputin. You're still sloppy," Dimitri growled brusquely, never turning.

"You haven't even been watching!" Razputin protested.

"I _felt_ you hit that pole!"

Sudden irritation swarming over his skin like ants, Razputin tailed Dimitri across the circus arena, lengthening his strides as he did so.

"What did that woman want?"

"Nothing you need to know about," he muttered hotly. When the Psychonaut drew even with him, he realized his father was boiling with anger: his lean, pockmarked face was blotchy with it. "Just go back and practice with everyone."

The short answers lit a fuse in him. He was being brushed off, and his voice rose to combat it:

"Dad, I'm serious—"

"Razputin, no more!"

Dimitri screeched to a halt and glared at his gangly son, jabbing a bony hand at the ongoing practice and bellowing:

"Trapeze, now!"

"Dad, listen to me! I'm a _psychonaut_," Razputin yelled, throwing his arms out. The motion only made his star-studded leotard and red-pinstriped leggings more conspicuous, but he muscled beyond that fact, staring his resentful father in the eye. "You can tell me anything that goes on in this family, because I swear it, if there's something wrong? I'll _help you_. I'll help you as best as I can, because I'm not a kid anymore: I'm a certified government agent! Sworn in and everything!"

And finally, he hit on it. Happy as his return to the circus had been, some things—words and lowered expectations and trivializing glances—still drew blood.

"You treat me like I'm still at knee-height, dad, but I've gone all over the world and helped more people than I can count. Mims, Sara, they all know it! In fact, everybody but you seems to know where I've been the past six years!"

Dimitri, surrounded by the yawning, striped cavern of the tent, went quiet. He realized indeed, with Razputin before him, his middle-most son who had won an Outstanding Acheivement award and had a hand in saving the Nigerian ambassador from mind control along with agents Vodello and Nein… he realized that Razputin had grown taller. Facial fuzz, closely shaven, dotted his chin, and his face was longer and less cherubic. He was becoming a man.

Perhaps, in time, he would be able to cope with all that this worldly boy had accomplished. For now, his earthly realization was enough: he had blindly underestimated his own son for far too long.

"I… forget," Dimitri began unsteadily. His voice was too thick for his own liking, but he pressed on. He looked up into the boy's green eyes, expression conflicted. "You're still my son, Razputin."

Raz nodded, both understanding and unyielding.

"I know. But outside of here—and inside here—" He gestured to the tent, then tapped his temple. "I'm still on the job. All the time. I'm a Psychonaut, dad. Have been for years. You gotta trust me."

He smiled feebly, sharp shoulders giving a little hiccup.

"Thousands of other people do."

Dimitri's thin lips quirked, and he nodded. He never was one to go with the public opinion, but…

"Alright."

Razputin smiled back, and a few moments later they were seated on a stack of gymnasts' blocks, Dimitri nearly slumping past his knees.

"That woman…" Dimitri grunted, running a yellow, gnarled hand over his eyes. He had to wait a moment before speaking, as though her memory angered him beyond words. "She's one of those people. Those arrogant swindlers that think that unregistered psychics are simply a field of cotton to be picked at price of whim and money."

It took Raz a few moments to figure out what he could possibly mean; when it came to him, his jaw dropped.

"She was trying to recruit you? _You_?" Razputin sputtered, voice cracking. He sat up straight, uncrossing his knees. "F-for what?"

"Another scheme. Any old scheme," Dimitri rumbled, rubbing his face in earnest now.

Now his father looked tired, as though he'd faced this too many times before.

"They get ahold of an empath, locate Psychics and try to… I don't know, take over the world." He snorted, the sound filled with dull disdain. "Sometimes they're just enthusiasts, who wish they were psychic themselves: want tutoring, or some related bunk. Impossible, but they won't listen. No. Other times, its people with money, power, greed and a low opinion of human worth. As though we're all too willing to be used."

Razputin's heart skipped a beat. His father had never used 'we' when referring to psychics. He thought of Sariel and his mouth twitched, despite the solemn words spoken. Refocusing himself, he tried to swallow the concept of it. He tried to think about some rich bastard trying to talk Sasha Nein into working for him on the side, or shamelessly propositioning beautiful Milla to bamboozle some guards so that a robbery could go smoothly. His gut rebelled at either scene.

They were humans, just like everyone else. But their talents went beyond simple skill: whereas artists and architects could be hired out, attempting to buy a Psychic was a personal offense. Powers stemmed from the soul and the mind; to suggest that such things were purchasable was a grave, demoralizing thing, especially when their efforts would go toward immoral activities. Psychonauts' services were never for sale unless it was a national issue, or for the good of the people. It was better that way.

But that only applied to registered Psychonauts and Psychic Potentials. Everyone else was free game.

"That's messed up." Razputin muttered softly. Dimitri nodded.

"The world is messed up, Razputin." His father's hand was dry on his back, chafing as the elder man patted his son. "That's why I chose to stay in here, where they can't get to me, and my family is safe."

The touch was rare, and as much as it startled and pleased Razputin, the irony of the situation didn't escape him. He smiled despite himself, fingers knitting.

"Joining the freak-show to escape the real freaks," Raz said amusedly.

Dimitri grinned, a jackal's grin.

"The best place to hide is in plain sight."


	6. Retrieval

A/N: Man, I love me some Psychonauts. STILL, NOW, THEN, AND FOREVER.

YAY SASHA :D I realize I've been playing him WAAAY more stoic than he needs to be. He'll get happier, I promise. THERE'S A REASON FOR EVERYTHING.

(And I swear, Milla's orphanage past is still canon. I'll get to that. PS: Did anybody else find the toy-box room of HELL inside her secret room?? HOW AWFUL WAS THAT, SHIT. Seriously.)

Sigh. I don't understand the fandom's halfhearted preoccupation with SashaxRaz. Seriously, I don't.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Retrieval

-.-.-.-.-.-

It was a particularly good crowd that night.

The plains of Idaho had enveloped them with gusto, hearty families filing in to scream and applaud and simply enjoy their performance without any hint of cynicism. Raz left his (recently-patented) solo feeling refreshed from all the good vibrations: say what they would about country folk, hand-churned butter and inbreeding sure drained the malice out of people. His brothers and sisters were chattering excitedly while he bent in the pungent, tarp-enclosed half-light, sweaty fingers working at the ties to his show boots.

"And, of course, Raz was amazing," Mimsi interjected into the rambunctious caucus of circus performers, womanly voice brimming with pride. Handfuls of eyes, all shorn of their masks and paint by this point, found him on his wooden box, and he tried not to notice too much, but smiled anyways. Byron, who had taken a liking to his stick-figure brother-in-law, agreed loudly and raised a brief family cheer for him. Raz called them down on it, feigning annoyance, but he nearly blushed when Mimsi picked her way over to him and kissed his cheek, one glittering hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you for coming back, Razputin," she said softly. She mussed his hair, then jiggled his head playfully. "We love hearing about you, but nothing is better than having you with us. It feels good."

"I know," he mumbled, and shyly armed his sister around the waist in a half-hug. She parted from him with another tug at his hair, which was red and thick just like hers, and went back to sit with the animal trainers, perched like a curvy rainbow toy on Byron's knee.

Raz got his first boot off, smiling anew to himself. What a good night, he thought. Seriously.

Somewhere in the din, Dimitri ducked into the changing tent and was quickly overcome with cheers and a small child or two orbiting his knees. He took the praise gruffly, as was his wont, and placed the children aside--surely his paternal instinct had departed after Tyler was born. He started toward the back of the tent, giving short congratulations as he went. Razputin looked up and smiled wider, but his thoughtless good cheer wasn't long to stay: Dimitri's reserved, dubious demeanor only intensified as he drew near, and halted in front of the young acrobat.

"There's someone outside for you. A woman."

"A woman?" Raz echoed hesitantly. He dug through the options as his father waited, perhaps looking for some vote of familiarity or expectant confidence from his son. Dimitri nodded.

"Yes. She says she wants to congratulate you on your performance."

Razputin remained hunched and silent. Perhaps some of his father's hermit-like paranoia had rubbed off on him like grease face-paint: he didn't feel right about anybody approaching his family at the moment. He looked up at Dimitri, face blank, and the elder acrobat motioned at the door.

"Long hair. Rainbow dress."

Gloominess wiped clean, Razputin sprang up, kicking off his remaining bright red boot.

"Awesome!" Then, a pause. "Is she pretty?"

His father eyed him doubtfully.

"Yes," he said after a moment. "If different."

"Cool," Raz exclaimed brightly, smile back with a vengeance. Without another question he loped through the shadowy circus menagerie, calling over his shoulder: "She's from camp. Thanks, dad!"

Dimitri watched him go, one hand on his furred chin.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Being suddenly restrained is by far the worst. Your expectation for sight slams into the sides of your head, beating its way out, even as the two dense, black spheres still turn in their too-slick sockets, trapped. Horrifically cut off. An itch grows in your dead eyes, just as one grows in your joints if restrained—if crammed inside a small black box, the urge to move, to thrash, is suddenly as acute as a thirst for water. No amount of screaming will bring that sight back.

It paralyzes and debases the rest of your senses.

He had been shipped to a hospital: Milla escaped with some deep cuts, infections and a small skingraft on her calf, but Sasha had become feverish from the shock of losing his sight. His temperature plunged, then topped out at one hundred and five: pyrokinetic activity rustled nervously around in his brain, and they put an inhibitor on him so he wouldn't fry himself. That also meant remaining in a metaphysical hotbox for a few days, which nearly drove him insane in itself, when he found the energy to wake up.

All the time, she was at his bedside. They, the attendings, let her stay there, because they all loved her and hurt to see her hurt (he could only imagine her dressing in grays and the dismayed looks she received, but imagination was all he had) and excused the unorthodox conduct with words like survivors guilt and recovery time.

And when she left, only to return hours later, the doctor (simply a mental smear of energy and a deep voice) talked to him for the first time, about his partner.

"You know, that young girl visits you often."

"Yes," he said, and it was that simple.

She came in and just sat. He could sense her—her equally active mind bounced back his radiation in curly-Q's, how could he ignore it feeding into his ear like a twisted strand of spaghetti?—but she never said a word. She was frightened. So, so very frightened. For him, and for herself.

Above all, Milla Vodello was a genuine bleeding heart. For days after he regained consciousness, she managed to stay silent. She knew his temperament, as well as she knew her own, and at first he was cynically surprised at her tact. But then, one ordinary mindless horrible blind day, it broke out of her:

"Tell me you don't blame me, Sasha," she whispered.

His fingers peeled away from the puzzle box he had been toying with. She sobbed, small and soft. He felt her shudder.

"Please. Oh, please."

He would not answer.

-.-.-.-

It was easy to find her in the deserted circus grounds, where the remnants of the audience gravitated toward the lamplights like lemon-yellow ghosts and swirled there, pacing or smoking or talking quietly.

Milla's hair was wrapped in a bright scarf, and large, amber-lens sunglasses sat on her small pointed nose. Even her attempts at blending in were incredibly outlandish-- especially among this homegrown crowd of country boys and quilting-bee girls, who probably found their eyes adhering to her like the sticky, rainbow lollipop she was. More so, she looked out of place in the empty area between the two main tents, fenced in by rigid stripes and darkness. She tucked her glasses away in a white purse when she saw him, face lighting up. When he waved, she spread her arms theatrically.

"Razputin! Darling!"

He would've been lying if he said his name didn't sound good in her voice, and the fact she'd come to SEE him perform made his head a little light. He couldn't quite fathom it, really. She had been in the stands like everyone else… even spinning fifty feet above the floor, he puzzled over how he had _missed_ her—she was twice as psychic as he was, which meant that she practically glowed in the dark—but then as he jogged towards her, she let her shields drop, and her carmine red presence blipped into his mind's eye like a radar cite. He grinned, pointing knowingly at her.

"Ah-hah. That's why."

She made a scolding sound, pursing her lips.

"I couldn't just let you spot me! I'm supposed to be undercover, after all. Isn't that what International Psychic Agents do?"

She tapped her glasses, with the air of one playing an elaborate game. Then she swept him into a tight hug and rattled him for a moment, holding him out in front of her the next moment. He decided he was getting kissed by way too many non-girlfriendy girls when she jerked him close again and pecked him noisily on the head.

"Oh, I've missed you!"

Eternally Maternal Milla. She smelled like dense, hot tropical flowers and, strangely, baby powder. She looked him over, now, red mouth twitching in something indecently close to amusement.

"But I don't know if I like those colors on you, little one."

Coming from Milla, that was a dangerous statement requiring immediate attention. Razputin went red and muttered:

"Can't help it. Family uniforms."

As though it jogged her memory, she let go of him to clap her hands and laugh.

"Oh, and you were wonderful! So amazing, I've never, ever seen anything so colorful and unique!"

He was about to tell her to look in a mirror, but his curiosity (and tact) got there first.

"They didn't have circuses in Brazil?" He asked her.

"Honey, we rode goats for fun," Milla muttered dryly, then impulsively smeared a bit of hair out of his eyes, grinning at him. "You're such a skilled acrobat. I mean that!"

"Thanks!" He gave a fancy bow, then held up a finger, grinning confidently at her. "It's all muscle, y'know—no brain power involved."

"Darling, I KNOW there is brain power involved in that, it just doesn't happen to be psychoactive," she told him seriously, and he smiled at how badly she wanted to praise him. Her voice was warm and hearty like broth, and it warmed him to his fingers. "We enjoyed the show so much."

Raz paused, quirking an eyebrow.

"We?"

Milla actually rolled her eyes, bouncy posture decaying into a slouch.

"Pardon, Razputin—WE came, and I enjoyed the show," she amended, one gloved hand gesturing behind her. "Sasha apparently can see no good in a little eclectic fun under a tent."

He half-smiled, taking no offense.

"Don't suppose he would."

Sasha probably detested circuses with all his being, but Milla was too nice to tell him, and too adventurous to resist seeing him (or lifting new fashion ideas from the tutu show girls). Now that he knew the layout of things, he really didn't expect his former tutor to cross the boundaries of his own austere whimsy to brave screaming children, smelly animals and unbearable heat, all to see _him_ flip over a few fire hoops. Seriously. He looked where Milla had pointed.

"Is he waiting in the car or something?" He asked incredulously.

"Has been since six." Milla sighed.

The deep color of night around them and the immediate, nearly pre-mediated chorus of cicadas ended any need to elaborate what that meant.

"Wow," Raz summed up after a moment. Milla nodded.

"The man is a statue."

There was something tired and borderline chilly in the way she said it: enough that Razputin watched her as she unfolded her glasses and put them on again, red mouth flat. The acrobat felt the first twinge of suspicion, and waited a moment before speaking.

"How long'd you drive to get here?" He asked her, suddenly critical.

"Just a few hours. We flew from headquarters."

Unbidden, he had an image of Sasha gritting his teeth while Milla wailed along to ABBA. He tried not to snort.

"Must've been an interesting trip."

She ignored him, if with fondness. Then the canary yellow elixir of energy entered her face again, and she looked at him affectionately.

"It's so lonely and dull without you."

"But why are you here?" Raz found himself half-demanding, eyeing her. The situation, which he'd accepted easily until now (old teachers coming over jet and car to visit their favorite student in his family's impossible-to-locate circus act when they should be saving the world, sure), was a little too weird for his liking, and becoming weirder every minute. He wasn't so sure he wanted to hear the answer to his next question (his body chilled a little at the very notion), but he forced it out anyways: "You have to take me back for something at HQ?"

"Not to HQ," she assured him earnestly. She patted her bag, then bit her lip, avoiding his eyes for a second. "Darling, I didn't mean to take you from your family so soon—"

That's it. He knew it was coming. He didn't quite know how to take it: it was jarring, certainly, but it didn't merit anger.

"But you need me," he finished for her, shoulders dropping.

"We do. It's very important," she said softly, and despite his beaten feeling, he felt a different kind of pride flutter inside him: the kind that had to do with the greater, more perilous good, and suiting up in leather instead of lycra. She held his eyes, sweet and understanding.

"Is it too much, Razputin?"

He knew that if he refused her, Milla would go back to the car and tell Sasha that they'd found the wrong circus. He would know she was lying, but he would accept it regardless, and they'd drive away and wait for him to come back to HQ on his own.

He looked over his shoulder, and placed the inconspicuous nudge of psychic energy he'd felt a moment ago. His father stood in the fold of a tent, bright skinny limbs almost supplanting the stripes in which he hid. Face solemn, he nodded. Razputin returned the nudge and the nod.

His father had reached out to him while he was here. Truly. That alone spoke of the change that had occurred in their months together--in his months with the family. But… this was a good thing. Best that he reclaim his office job before he got too comfortable here, really. His days of running away from the circus were over, but he had to rediscover the desire to run back to a life of psychic espionage. That, and an eternity of paperwork.

"No," he answered, smiling blandly. He felt a little light-headed, but that would pass. "I'm good, Milla. 'Too much' isn't my middle name, but the two probably share some letters somewhere. I'm good."

She sighed and squealed and swooned at the same time and grabbed him up again, and his smile twitched a little wider. It was a mark of trust that he did not ask about the mission—not yet. He doubt he could've slowed Milla down enough to ask it, infatuated as she was with the idea of him coming along. She grabbed his hand and led him through the quiet circus grounds as lights flickered out all around them.

"Now we get to have a _real_ road-trip!"

"Yipee-doodah-day,"

He tried not to groan. The proximity of 'The Best of ABBA' was nearing a point of toxicity, he was sure of it. He could almost feel his clothes turning to pleather.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"You aren't blind, Sasha."

He did not sit up.

He did not relax or gasp, but instead maintained his mistrustful silence. Then followed a dry explanation: the blast and forthcoming trauma had burst all of the blood vessels in his eyes—the red would drain as he healed, but being smooth muscle it would take a while—and the light had seared his retinas. The result was an ultra-sensitivity to light. The reason his pupils contracted so drastically was to let less light in, so the internal workings of his eyes would not be damaged.

Sasha would be susceptible to migraines—oh, and how.

Sasha, on the eve of his twentieth birthday, lay in his hospital bed with coarse white bandages stacked over his eyes, and never spoke a word. He sat rigidly as a man's hand held his chin while a clean line of metal slid against his skull. A short click, and Sasha clenched his eyes shut against the fresh air. Small twiggy somethings were hooked over his ears.

"You can open your eyes."

He did.

Light (pain, synonymous poisonous pain) encroached from all sides, and he made a shocked sound and jammed the glasses fast to his face. They bit into his nose. But the dark rectangles, small and professional, afforded him sight. An itch of weeks siphoned out of his eyes as he explored the room and all the corners in it: things he had only bumped into before, the doctor who's voice had followed him for those weeks. He could see. _See_. Relief cooling his blood, he retreated to the darkness of his head again, if just to sleep with the knowledge the darkness would not last.

The doctor laughed, probably due to his sigh.

"Welcome back, PsiCadet Nein—and happy birthday."

Sasha smiled, still holding his glasses to his face.


	7. Childhood Haven

A/N: WOOOOOO. :D Two chapters at once! _Now_ it gets interesting! … Sorta.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Childhood Haven

-.-.-.-.-.-

"Close your eyes, Razputin!"

They had driven for a solid afternoon. Although the clashing of musical tastes he predicted had not occurred (the radio was fixed on a lilting classical station, as per Sasha's tame taste) but it became obvious that Milla had had no one to talk to in days. She craned over the back of her seat, chirping at him at odd intervals like an infatuated teen, plucking from him exotic details about his life in the circus. She laughed loudly at little things, but far from annoying Sasha, the pallid man smiled at her snowballing levity, and seemed in a stable mood himself.

Last night he had been waiting against the car, door ajar and placidly smoking. Raz had offered a robust greeting, to which the professional agent smiled and firmly took his hand, imparting a word of two of gladness in his throaty Germanic voice. Sufficient enough to reaffirm that he did indeed care for his young protégé: and just as Raz found his love returned and affirmed when he went back to the circus, he knew his teachers had missed him.

Now, stuck in their avocado-green Winnebago (which smelled faintly of cats; Sasha assured him the car was not his, but a loaner. Milla then goaded him into a brief squabble about cats, which had no real beginning or end) Razputin strained to see out the badly-tinted windows, reacting as any boy would to the warning given. Utter disobedience.

"Razputin!" Milla scolded, reaching back and taking a blind whap at him; Sasha actually chuckled at their antics as they swatted back and forth, neither acting their age.

"What? What is it?" He demanded petulantly.

He could blame this complete lack of gravity and professionalism on the fact that he had just taken a pleasant road-trip with his two entirely unconcerned and talkative teachers, and the excitement of the promised mission was clouding his judgment. That, and they had stopped for Slurpees halfway through, and Raz now saw everything in shades of Razzleberry Bloo.

The car stopped, and Razputin viciously protested everything from his instructors' cruelty to the lack of air-conditioning. And the cat smell.

"Close those eyes or we're not going an inch further," Milla warned him, green eyes pining him through the review mirror.

Razputin ejected a nasal, irritated sound, but sat back in his brown velour seat and covered his eyes with his hand.

"And no clairvoyance."

_Obviously_.

"And no attitude!" Milla quipped, plucking the thought right out of his head.

"Okay, fine!"

Then, when he had complied and they still weren't moving, he gave the wheels a mental push, and felt Milla's pink amusement corkscrew into the air. They were totally laughing at him. _Totally_.

"Come on, lets go!" He whined into the blackness of his hand.

"Don't speak to your teachers in that manner, Mr. Aquato," Sasha said serenely, as though he and Milla were trading smiles while the car sped up.

"Coworkers," Raz corrected him toothily, and Sasha chuckled again, deep and amused. The road became a little rougher.

"Infinitely senior coworkers," Sasha countered, and when Razputin snorted, the radio coughed and Bach's fifth symphony wiggled all over the place, radio reception crackling and phasing out. Sasha made a satisfied sound and switched it off, and the car was silent.

"You could've kept it on. It probably would'a cleared up," Raz offered after a ten-minute stretch of _nothing_. He wouldn't ordinarily complain, but being deprived of sight _and_ sound left him very very few means to battle boredom or insanity. Milla shook her head: he heard her hair rustle.

"Not where we're going."

That destination seemed pretty imminent: the car came to a slow stop, veering into what he assumed to be a parking place. Milla made an excited sound, a car door popped open, and instantly Razputin smelled a forest. Pine needles and green air. He groped for the door handle, confused, but Milla got there first and, leading him out with her small gloved hands, set him on the smooth asphalt. 

"Welcome back, Razputin!"

He opened his eyes. He was in a circular parking lot, asphalt wheel skewered by a single tree stump. Incredibly ordinary—pedestrian, even, like the entrance to some sort of historical park—but somehow a doorway to memories. Never mind that this was the first time he had actually arrived to Whispering Rock this way: the first time had been through a bunch of espionage and pine trees, and the remainder… well, his family didn't have a car.

"Woah," he exclaimed.

Sasha appeared to his left, stretching casually with small, satisfied sounds.

"Still the same—time goes on, eh?" He commented, while Milla looked around, earrings bobbing this way and that. While he was nauseatingly confused about the _entire_ ordeal, he wondered whether this trip was for his benefit or theirs: his old teachers, six years away from their jobs at Whispering Rock, must have missed it dearly and it showed on their antipodal faces. When Milla had filled her senses, it seemed, she turned on her former student, gleaming with her Mental-Minx smile.

"Are you excited?" She asked him.

Despite the sudden, group rush of nostalgia, Razputin turned around, hands outstretched.

"This is what you brought me back for?" He asked the world, not angrily, but saturated with a puzzlement so intense it drained and choked his voice. "Whispering Rock Summer Camp? My family could be anywhere by now, and this… this isn't an emergency?"

"Razputin," Sasha began evenly (diplomatically): he was encouraged when his student didn't cut him off, but remained frozen with his mouth open. He cleared his throat. "We knew you wouldn't want to come back so soon, but we thought this would be a pleasant occasion."

"I talked to your eldest sister on the morning we came for you. We have your family's schedule for the next two months," Milla offered hopefully, hands clasped almost shyly over her hip. When the young man stayed mired in his formidable silence, she added softly: "You can go back after it's over, or anytime at all. But Sasha and I wanted you here for this."

"What is _this_?" He asked them, seeming to wake. There was a tremble in him, but in moments his voice relaxed: he gave into the burgeoning forest, to the absurdity of it all—what he'd been ripped away from, and then thrust into-- and soaked in the smell of cooking wood.

"Nothing too important," Sasha answered, shrugging his shoulders, but glanced back at him with an arched brow and smile: all strangely mischievous for the stoic man. He started up the path to the main Lodge, hands in his pockets.

"Just a hero's return."

Milla bustled after him with her purse and hair-scarf in hand, giggling.

"I hope you like children! It's time for you to meet your adoring public!"

Razputin watched them go for a matter of moments, simply staring. When it became obvious that neither of them were going to come back, give up the hoax and explain everything to him (or rewind time and let him go to sleep on his circus cot), he picked up his curiously heavy, pin-needled feet and jogged after his teachers.

"Wait—what?" He sputtered, drawing even with them on the last rise before the lodge. A squirrel shot out of a tree and zoomed under his feet, making him shriek a little—so Milla took the time to laugh at him before answering, and even patted his shoulder. He scowled good-naturedly: everyone knew how the squirrels were. Dogan may have been able to write a novel, but everyone _knew_.

"You're going to help us a little this year, Agent Aquato."

"But… adoring public?" He squeaked, simply not swallowing all of the information.

"Yes… I'm sure the children will be very interested in seeing one of their most notorious legends brought to life," Sasha mused, shedding his jacket and slinging it over his shoulder as he loped up onto the wooden path. Razputin couldn't help but watch in some amazement as the pale man then turned and offered his hand to Milla, who took it with a bit of a blush, and clacked up beside him.

Then came the fact of what he'd just _heard_.

"I'm a… a legend?" Razputin parroted dumbly, levitating himself over a gap in the walkway.

"In quite the litereral sense." Sasha chuckled.

Beyond the warm, pleasant buzz generated by his ego, now settling quite comfortably in his ears like a fat cat, he made a mental note to count just how many times Sasha had expressed happiness or amusement that day. It was utterly unreal. _Everything_ was utterly unreal: it was like he'd stepped back in time and space and theory and… and some scientist was crying his eyes out a million miles away, just _because_.

Milla drew him back again with a hand on his head. She smeared his hair into place again, smiling.

"Go, darling. We have to go meet with the Psychonaut attendings. You'll be announced tomorrow, so you only have tonight until the children start losing their tongues around you."

"Try not to get too attached to solitude, Razputin," Sasha murmured over his shoulder. Milla looked at him, and he looked at Milla, and they smiled and walked into the Lodge together, sunny mental moments practically winking over their heads.

Razputin walked away feeling incredibly unnerved, stunned and the tiniest bit emotionally complete. But maybe that last part was vicarious: who knew?

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Within ten minutes, he'd encountered a fair few adults. They didn't even look at him strangely, being as _everyone_ on Whispering Rock grounds had some sort of psychic excellence inside their skulls. No one suspected a newcomer so long as he had the same spark, and they quickly told him what he needed to know: the kids were on a fieldtrip down at the lake, so the rest of the compound was free for memory grazing. Raz wandered happily as he could, soaking in Whispering Rock: childhood haven and all. It smelled just the same, right down to the suspicious, yellow-smelling funk that always hung around the boys' cabin.

He looked it up and down, noticing how they'd changed the color of the flags inside. He patted his bunk, and laid his head on it for a moment. That first night at Whispering Rock was the most important he had ever slept through. It all lay in knowing that he had succeeded in something he had wanted more than anything on earth: he was there, he was safe, and he had done it all on his own. The power-high should have kept him awake for hours, but it ended up knocking him out like a blow to the system. He slept like the dead that night, wrapped in the open-air feeling of the cabin and the breathing kids around him.

He dredged himself from his half-curl on the bunk, remembering how he had to kick his legs to get all the way up. He smirked absently, and patted the hard mattress one last time. Then he left, only to run into something else—a living, breathing, dangerous memory.

She came out of a cabin, smiling sweetly with her eyes on the ground. Razputin froze, reacting to her like a bulbous-eyed frog to a flashlight, trembling slightly in his cold mental pond water and generating nervous, shocked ripples. Then the _fact_ of her registered, and Razputin _needed_ to run, adrenaline punching him in the gut: but whether it was away from her or toward her, he had no idea.

Seeing her in Whispering Rock was just too much. Out of Psychonauts gear, hair lazily tucked into a bun, it was just too _natural_. In the end, his feet jerked into motion (decided just to outright bolt, with utter abandon to boot, and find a nice tree to hide behind until she went away) right when she looked up; he stumbled in place, arms wind-milling. He saw her, she saw him. He looked down, so he wouldn't see her smile disappear.

"Hey," she said after a lukewarm second.

"Fancy seeing you here," he tried jauntily, the old Raz Pizazz earning him a twitch of her face.

Birds and squirrels and other small, live things jabbered around them. Otherwise, silence.

"Whispering Rock…" He almost exhaled the name, when she didn't say anything more. "S'good to be back, huh?"

She shrugged and he loved--instinctively—the soft skin of her easy shoulders and the way she moved.

"In ways," she murmured, and, seeing his expression (forcibly blank as he told himself not to love her, really), conceded. "I love the smell of it."

A pause.

"Smells like adventure and frontal lobes."

And she said it with a coy smile.

Raz got indecently excited, like an IV of hot bright liquid straight to his chest.

"And pond scum smells like a good rescue, huh?" He returned sagely, eagerness obvious and shining as he stared at her. She looked up at him out of her lashes, cocking one soft shoulder.

"Thanks for that," she told him, warm and real.

Finally, they were in their element. It was unbelievable. The office walls weren't killing them, Marc wasn't lurking behind her with drink mixes and they were back at the beginning at summer camp. Hot eternal summer camp, boring Whispering Rock where nothing important _ever_ happens, but then _he_ happened. It was sweet, pine-scented renewal, and Lili's smile still made his heart flutter. His not-really-girlfriend. He had to steady himself before he answered her.

"Anytime, Lili."

He hoped he didn't sound too breathless.

Then she looked at him, appraisingly, actually interested. That spark of conscious attention in _his_ direction still floored him (god, she was vibrant and beautiful), but he still raised his eyebrows. She bit her lip for a moment, as if wondering how to phrase something.

"Is Linda still…?" She began slowly.

"She—er, it--sends me letters." He supplied briskly, smiling from ear to ear. Lili's face puckered.

"Letters?"

"Radio messages. The old lady is pretty psychoactive, really," he amended, chuckling. "Letters would have a hard time finding me, anyways."

"You've been away?"

In her question was the admission (but not admission, no, it was just a fact to her) that she had not noticed his absence at work, or had not looked for him. He looked away from her pretty face, and some of Whispering Rock's charm flickered; nostalgia caved like a beloved, rotted Halloween pumpkin. The office hovered outside this little world, threatening.

"Yeah. Back with the fam."

He shrugged. Her eyebrows raised, and her eyes scanned him, as if refitting him in a leotard.

"Back in the candy-corn menagerie," she muttered, then looked surprised at herself, like a stream of cold water had run down her neck.

Raz himself nearly jumped. That phrase—that exact phrase—he'd used over five years ago to describe his family. Huddling with Lili in the darkness of _the ship_, waiting for Milla and Sasha and Ford, hands resting on wrists… but when the world got quiet and dangerous their fingers twined, and the feeling was the best in the world. The best in his life.

Lili looked down, eyes wide.

"Yeah. Candy-corn menagerie is a good phrase. We look like a box of candy, anyways," he said weakly, drawing her back. She looked up: she was at a loss, obvious in her critical, sepia-rimmed eyes that searched him even as she smiled, starkly. Shadowed by a memory.

"Every family's different," she said, and some of the office's coolness filled the space between them. Raz's face fell a notch, and he grasped for her retreating warmth, their moment of summer camp and huge fish and brains.

"How'd you get here?" He blurted. She stuck her hands in her pockets.

"Jet."

"Lucky. Road-trip for me."

He jabbed a thumb at his chest, but it was useless: her eyes were no longer on him.

"That sucks."

And the conversation ended.

"I have to get back to the Lodge," she told him, looking into the distance. He nodded.

"See you."

He went into the cabin and watched her walk away through the bug-spattered, brown window. He had to.

He just couldn't imagine seeing her again.


End file.
